Celebrating Grant

Please visit www.grantimaharafoundation.org

Grant Masaru Imahara was born October 23, 1970 in Los Angeles, CA. He grew up in Southern California and was raised by his mother, Carolyn Imahara. As a child, he demonstrated profound curiosity in how things were made, and loved to spend hours building with Lego blocks. By age five, Carolyn recalls, Grant’s grandmother gave him a little screwdriver, “So that was the end of any complete toys, he took everything apart.” Grant first knew he wanted to be a roboticist after his mom took him to see Star Wars in 1977. He was enthralled with the heroic characters R2-D2 and C-3P0, and his attraction to the droids would prove to be an ironic foreshadowing of Grant’s destiny.

He attended the School of Engineering at University of Southern California. In his junior year, he experienced a crisis of direction, and decided he might like to be a screenwriter instead. Finding that restrictions for the Cinematic Arts School at USC prevented him from such a course, he decided to drop out instead. A counselor at USC referred Grant to Tom Holman, a professor in the School of Cinematic Arts Department, and the inventor of Lucasfilm’s THX sound system technology. Professor Holman, an engineer himself, proved to be an invaluable mentor for Grant, and renewed his enthusiasm for the field of engineering. He also helped to facilitate an internship for Grant in Lucasfilm’s Home THX Division at Skywalker Ranch. Grant graduated from USC in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and was immediately hired as a fulltime employee by the THX Department.

During his time at Skywalker Ranch, and based on his skill set, he was invited to upgrade the electro-mechanics of a few R2-D2 units in the Lucasfilm Archives. This in turn led to Grant being one of only three official operators of the droid for live events and commercials during the mid-90’s, and also got him noticed by Industrial Light & Magic’s Model Shop. Grant began his career with ILM in 1996. As a Model Maker for the next nine years, he contributed to iconic films such as Star Wars: Episodes I, II and III, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. While at ILM, Grant also redesigned the animatronics for the robotic Energizer Bunnies used in the Energizer ad campaign.

The early 2000s were an intensely productive time for Grant, and he began to explore creative outlets outside his day job at ILM. He designed and built Deadblow, a fighting robot, and he and his machine became perennial favorites on Comedy Central’s Battlebots. His expertise and popularity prompted a DIY book authored by Grant, titled Kickin’ Bot – An Illustrated Guide To Building Combat Robots. He also mentored the Richmond High robotics team for several years for the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international high school robotics competition. This inspired some of the students to stay involved and become mentors themselves, one of whom runs the program to this day.

In 2005, Grant joined the Mythbusters cast in its third season where he reunited with fellow hosts and ILM Model Shop alumni Adam Savage and Tory Belleci, and fellow Battlebots competitor, Jamie Hyneman. The show was one of Discovery Channel’s most popular series. In the words of principle host, Adam Savage, “Grant’s contribution to Mythbusters is hard to overstate. He was the only one of the five hosts to have an actual degree in what we were doing, which was engineering and science.” In 2010, while still with Mythbusters, Grant was invited to create a comedic robot sidekick named Geoff Peterson for Craig Ferguson, host of The Late Late Show. At the end of the 2014 season, Grant, and fellow build team hosts, Tory Belleci and Kari Byron, would leave Mythbusters, but would resurface in 2016, on another investigatory program called White Rabbit Project on Netflix.

Grant tragically passed away in July 2020 from a brain aneurysm, cutting short a prolific life that was spent inspiring others in science and the arts. One of Grant’s last creations was to build an animatronic Baby Yoda, based on the character from the Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian. He did all the mechanical design, programming, and 3D printing of the molds. It was a personal project, and when asked why he made it, he replied, “It could be a character I could bring to children’s hospitals for charity work, which is something I’ve been committed to doing. In the few public outings we’ve had, everyone melts. He’s a happiness maker.” Sadly, Grant’s opportunity to cheer up children in hospitals with Baby Yoda may have been cut short, but there’s no doubt how much he touched people throughout his lifetime. Grant was a happiness maker.