The youngest of eight brothers from a Wisconsin family, Noe was born with a physical disability that required immediate orthopedic surgery and frequent hospital stays during his childhood. “I needed a lot of help, so when I would imagine my future,” Noe says, “I imagined it in terms of helping others. The seed of a Jesuit vocation — which St. Ignatius of Loyola (the community’s founder) described as ‘to help souls’ — might already have been planted.”

Noe took his childhood dreams to be a scientist, engineer or physician to Purdue in 1988. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1993, he opted to continue his studies, completing a master’s degree in electrical engineering, with an emphasis on biomedical engineering, in 1996.

This was no easy master’s thesis defense. His committee was comprised of legendary engineering professors Les Geddes, Joseph Bourland and John Nyenhuis as well as George Wodicka, now the Dane A. Miller Head of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue. Noe’s research project, at Purdue’s Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Research Center, examined induced-current stimulation of peripheral nerves, a hypothesized side effect of medical imaging by fast-scan magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices.

Graduate degree in hand, Noe moved to Washington to conduct biomedical research at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Later, there were stops at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

But something was tugging at Noe. “As my conviction grew that technology cannot touch the deepest questions of life, my focus began to change,” he says.

While living in the nation’s capital, he began to seriously consider a life in Christian ministry —stemming from volunteer work and his acquaintance with St. Anselm’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, and Bethlehem House, a community formed by people with developmental disabilities and others who live with them. So in 2003, he entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a Roman Catholic religious order.

Noe’s training included studies at Loyola University in Chicago, where he earned a second master’s degree (in applied philosophy) while studying Spanish in Bolivia over the summer. With his background in electrical engineering and fluency in Spanish, he returned to Bolivia for two years to teach electronics at Instituto de Aprendizaje Industrial, a technical school founded and run by Jesuits.

In 2010, Noe came back to the U.S. to study at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California. After his ordination in 2013, Noe was sent to Sacred Heart Church in Richmond, Virginia, to become associate pastor. In 2015, he was missioned to Loyola on the Potomac, a Jesuit retreat house in Faulkner, Maryland, where he currently serves as Director of Ignatian Spirituality.

Noe says his Purdue engineering studies shaped his thinking about a purpose, a mission and a mindset for his vocation as a Catholic priest. His fondest Boilermaker memories are as a graduate student and the interactions with students and faculty, namely academic giants such as professors Geddes and Bourland, two of the “Fab 4” who came from Baylor University in 1974 (the other two were professors Willis Tacker and Charles Babbs). They led the launch of Purdue’s Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Research Center, the foundation for what became the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in 2004.

“While we were doing very different research, there was a camaraderie among my classmates that I now describe as a vocation to make a real contribution to addressing problems in people’s lives, problems with people’s health,” he says.

That also was when Noe turned his attention to what he described as “a positive and clear human end,” where the focus was on a meaningful and purposeful profession. Salary, he says, was secondary to the societal impact he could have as an engineer and problem solver. “It felt like a mission in a way that’s not so different than a mission in a more explicitly religious sense.”

That was cemented when Noe neared the end of his graduate studies and was preparing to defend his master’s thesis. His research examined induced-current stimulation of peripheral nerves, a hypothesized side effect of medical imaging by fast-scan magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices. Noe recalls a talk with Professor Bourland, who emphasized that Noe was ready and that he should schedule it sooner rather than later.

“That changed my relationship with Professor Bourland. I came to realize that this was a shared project and that it had been for a while,” he says. “For me, moments like this one — when my mentors would acknowledge a new competency or capacity I’d developed — were probably the most important ones.  These new skills, and the confidence that came with them, were gifts that the faculty gave me.”

Even today, two decades after receiving his Purdue graduate degree, Noe says engineering plays a key role in his life as a priest and Christian minister, particularly in a world so driven by technology and engineering.

“In my engineering studies and work, I learned to value ‘pure’ knowledge for its practical impact on the world and our possibilities of living within it,” he says. “In a similar way, I value religious learning for the practical ways of life it offers to people of faith. My studies and work have convinced me that technology cannot resolve the deepest challenges and sorrows of our lives. In fact, the technology we develop can sometimes present us new challenges and sorrows.”

Top photo: The Rev. William Noe (BSEE ’93, MSEE ’96), director of Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola on the Potomac, a Jesuit retreat house in Faulkner, Maryland.

Bottom photo: Noe visits with Jim Palmer, executive director of Loyola on the Potomac.