Showing posts with label bioengineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bioengineering. Show all posts
Monday, 8 December 2014
Wall of Women Update
We've something a little different on our Wall of Women today - an interview with Claire Johnson, who is a teaching technician. Claire now runs lab practicals for Bioengineering students, but studied biochemistry at Sheffield before getting a job at the Dental School and then moving into the Engineering faculty as a Research Technician in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Follow the link for Claire's interview.
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
#BustingStereotypes with Sebastiana.
On Tuesday 28th October the BBC ran a special day of events celebrating the achievements of inspirational women. You might have seen us joining in, by tweeting about our own University of Sheffield women who are #BustingStereotypes. Today we have a post about a young family who are also #BustingStereotypes in the way they've decided to divide up childcare - and what that means for their careers.
It's a well-known fact that studying for a PhD requires hard work, commitment, dedication and the drive to succeed. It's also a well-known fact that being a mother is difficult - sleepless nights, nappy changes and the challenges of parenting all take their toll. A lot has been written about the challenges of balancing an academic career and parenthood - but what about those who become parents while they're still studying?
Sebastiana, who studied Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of Catania (Sicily) before moving to Sheffield with her Italian husband earlier this year, is in the first year of her PhD in Synthetic Ecology - and also in her first year of bringing up a young daughter. We caught up with her in the Mappin Café to find out about the challenges of bringing up a family, overcoming stereotypes and why some of the same skills are needed in both engineering and parenting.
Sebastiana decided to become an engineer after being inspired by her husband and sisters, who both have engineering degrees. "In Italy, being an engineer is prestigious - it's a title, like 'Doctor', people might refer to you as Engineer. It means you have a good education and good skills. There is some dirty work, but fundamentally it's a top position." Having studied Chemistry, she realised that engineering has a more practical focus, working on solving real-world problems, and this is what attracted her. It wasn't an easy choice - in Italy only two out of twenty people studying her course were female, and she acknowledges that it was harder for her than others. "As a woman in science, I had to work to be better than everybody else - not only academically, but I had to work harder to prove myself, because I am a woman. Some of my professors had old-fashioned views about things."
Sebastiana was six months pregnant by the end of her Masters degree, and she knew she wanted to carry on with a PhD at Sheffield. Although her parents were extremely supportive of her career choices, that wasn't the case for everybody in her life. "In Sicily, where I come from, there is still this perception - why do you need to work? Your husband has a job! You're expected to stop working when you have a baby," she says. "But I was very clear with my husband from the start - this is what I want to do. He supports me in that."
So, in the last weeks of her pregnancy, she prepared and submitted her research proposal, choosing Sheffield because of its place in international university rankings and the research interests of her supervisor. Just one week after she gave birth to her daughter, she was interviewed - and offered a place. She and her family made the move to Sheffield earlier this year. Now, she spends her days in the lab, while her husband looks after their daughter. "I didn't want to put my career on hold because I had had a baby - I felt like I'd miss opportunities. My husband doesn't speak much English - when the baby is a little older he can go to English classes - so this was the best choice."
"In Sicily this would be really unusual. But studying for my PhD, that's my 'me time'!" she laughs.
How does she balance her responsibilities? "I come into work early, take just a 30 minute lunch break, and focus on what I have to do while I'm here. My husband looks after the baby in the day and when I'm home in the evening that's my time for my husband and my family - though I do sometimes work at the weekend, if the baby is asleep. The supervisor is important - PhD students can feel isolated because there's just you and the research. But my supervisor is really supportive. When I said I had a baby, he said "that's great!" He treats me just like he treats everybody else. In the future I want to move into a post-doctoral position and carry on researching."
Would Sebastiana encourage other women to follow a career in engineering? "I don't think we should distinguish between men and women," she says. "It should be about whether you have the skills and the capacity. But I think females can be better than males! Women don't fear challenges and problems and can deal with a lot of things - we are multi-taskers. You need all these skills as an engineer."
I ask how having a daughter has changed her. "I am more patient now. Things go wrong in parenting and you have to try to find solutions. The baby can't talk! But it's the same in the lab - things don't work as they should and you have to try to fix it. It's all research."
Would she want her daughter to be an engineer? "She might have different aspirations. Both her parents are engineers, so no pressure! I want her to know that she has options and can choose - she can be whatever she wants to be."
Finally, I ask Sebastiana whether having a baby and studying engineering means that she still has to be better than everybody else - do people doubt her commitment to her role? Does she still have to prove herself all the time? "I still work hard, but because I want to work hard and do well, because I want the University to be proud of me like I am of belonging to it...not because people doubt my value. But being both a mum and an engineer doesn't make me that unusual. When you are motivated and you have one true dream, you find inside you the strength to do what you want to do."
It's a well-known fact that studying for a PhD requires hard work, commitment, dedication and the drive to succeed. It's also a well-known fact that being a mother is difficult - sleepless nights, nappy changes and the challenges of parenting all take their toll. A lot has been written about the challenges of balancing an academic career and parenthood - but what about those who become parents while they're still studying?
Sebastiana, who studied Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of Catania (Sicily) before moving to Sheffield with her Italian husband earlier this year, is in the first year of her PhD in Synthetic Ecology - and also in her first year of bringing up a young daughter. We caught up with her in the Mappin Café to find out about the challenges of bringing up a family, overcoming stereotypes and why some of the same skills are needed in both engineering and parenting.Sebastiana decided to become an engineer after being inspired by her husband and sisters, who both have engineering degrees. "In Italy, being an engineer is prestigious - it's a title, like 'Doctor', people might refer to you as Engineer. It means you have a good education and good skills. There is some dirty work, but fundamentally it's a top position." Having studied Chemistry, she realised that engineering has a more practical focus, working on solving real-world problems, and this is what attracted her. It wasn't an easy choice - in Italy only two out of twenty people studying her course were female, and she acknowledges that it was harder for her than others. "As a woman in science, I had to work to be better than everybody else - not only academically, but I had to work harder to prove myself, because I am a woman. Some of my professors had old-fashioned views about things."
Sebastiana was six months pregnant by the end of her Masters degree, and she knew she wanted to carry on with a PhD at Sheffield. Although her parents were extremely supportive of her career choices, that wasn't the case for everybody in her life. "In Sicily, where I come from, there is still this perception - why do you need to work? Your husband has a job! You're expected to stop working when you have a baby," she says. "But I was very clear with my husband from the start - this is what I want to do. He supports me in that."
So, in the last weeks of her pregnancy, she prepared and submitted her research proposal, choosing Sheffield because of its place in international university rankings and the research interests of her supervisor. Just one week after she gave birth to her daughter, she was interviewed - and offered a place. She and her family made the move to Sheffield earlier this year. Now, she spends her days in the lab, while her husband looks after their daughter. "I didn't want to put my career on hold because I had had a baby - I felt like I'd miss opportunities. My husband doesn't speak much English - when the baby is a little older he can go to English classes - so this was the best choice."
"In Sicily this would be really unusual. But studying for my PhD, that's my 'me time'!" she laughs.
How does she balance her responsibilities? "I come into work early, take just a 30 minute lunch break, and focus on what I have to do while I'm here. My husband looks after the baby in the day and when I'm home in the evening that's my time for my husband and my family - though I do sometimes work at the weekend, if the baby is asleep. The supervisor is important - PhD students can feel isolated because there's just you and the research. But my supervisor is really supportive. When I said I had a baby, he said "that's great!" He treats me just like he treats everybody else. In the future I want to move into a post-doctoral position and carry on researching."
Would Sebastiana encourage other women to follow a career in engineering? "I don't think we should distinguish between men and women," she says. "It should be about whether you have the skills and the capacity. But I think females can be better than males! Women don't fear challenges and problems and can deal with a lot of things - we are multi-taskers. You need all these skills as an engineer."
I ask how having a daughter has changed her. "I am more patient now. Things go wrong in parenting and you have to try to find solutions. The baby can't talk! But it's the same in the lab - things don't work as they should and you have to try to fix it. It's all research."
Would she want her daughter to be an engineer? "She might have different aspirations. Both her parents are engineers, so no pressure! I want her to know that she has options and can choose - she can be whatever she wants to be."
Finally, I ask Sebastiana whether having a baby and studying engineering means that she still has to be better than everybody else - do people doubt her commitment to her role? Does she still have to prove herself all the time? "I still work hard, but because I want to work hard and do well, because I want the University to be proud of me like I am of belonging to it...not because people doubt my value. But being both a mum and an engineer doesn't make me that unusual. When you are motivated and you have one true dream, you find inside you the strength to do what you want to do."
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
One to Watch: Bioengineering student Shruti Vasudev makes her mark on her placement year.
Last year Shruti spoke to us about choosing
Sheffield and her experiences so far at the University. A year on and she has
made the most of the opportunities that have come her way by actively seeking
out further career opportunities and training to add to her ever-growing
knowledge and experience of engineering.
Being highly motivated and ambitious one of Shruti’s
greatest achievements over this past year took
place on her placement year with National Instruments (NI) where she led a team
to victory working on a robotic arm draughts opponent.
Tell us about the team you successfully managed to victory:
Each year the
Application Engineering (AE) department at NI divides itself into four teams to
participate in the four-month long AE projects competition alongside our daily
roles. Rather than sit back I nominated myself to become the project manager for
one of the groups which saw me lead other interns as well as graduate
experienced employees by creating an automated draughts opponent using LabVIEW
and the new NI myRIO. We were announced as winners and treated to a lovely day
out and gifted an NI branded polo shirt with 'AE project winners 2014' written
on the back.
The
experience helped me realise my passion for management and I decided to enroll
onto an external self-funded course called PRINCE2. This course is a project
management course that many companies follow the principles of and I passed
both the foundation and practitioner exams for the course and am now officially
a PRINCE2 Practitioner. NI have offered me a graduate job to be taken up upon
the completion of my degree after seeing my work and enthusiasm over the year.
How did it
feel managing a group of engineers?
Part of my group was made up of interns who started with me and had similar levels of technical knowledge and experience as me so it was easier than I thought. The experienced engineers are great at what they do and with them I took the approach of learning from their individual management styles and experiences. I would ask them for their opinions on how a task should be done and then use the advice that made most sense to me and matched my project plans. When I nominated myself for the role I knew this was my one chance to learn about project management from the experienced team members on this team who had had previous experience at managing teams and were willing to teach me as we went along .
Part of my group was made up of interns who started with me and had similar levels of technical knowledge and experience as me so it was easier than I thought. The experienced engineers are great at what they do and with them I took the approach of learning from their individual management styles and experiences. I would ask them for their opinions on how a task should be done and then use the advice that made most sense to me and matched my project plans. When I nominated myself for the role I knew this was my one chance to learn about project management from the experienced team members on this team who had had previous experience at managing teams and were willing to teach me as we went along .
You said you
nominated yourself - do you feel pressure to 'step forward' and be seen because
of your gender or are you a natural leader?
No, I did not feel pressured at all. I do agree that there are fewer women than men in the engineering industry but that is changing and if you work hard and prove yourself to be worthy of a role then people will respect you irrespective of your gender. I feel I am a natural leader who thrives in management related roles and am constantly trying to improve and further develop my leadership skills by learning from the people around me.
No, I did not feel pressured at all. I do agree that there are fewer women than men in the engineering industry but that is changing and if you work hard and prove yourself to be worthy of a role then people will respect you irrespective of your gender. I feel I am a natural leader who thrives in management related roles and am constantly trying to improve and further develop my leadership skills by learning from the people around me.
Every team in
the project had a mentor and I took a lot of guidance from our mentor for my
project manager role. My mentor helped me develop my management style and
advised me on different approaches to managing the different people in the team
and I learned a great deal as a result of this.
What’s been
the biggest learning curve?
Very early on in this internship I realised that I am here not to prove myself or the skills I already possess but to try and acquire new skills and knowledge from the pool of brilliant, talented and experienced engineers I was working with. This attitude and willingness to learn is what I feel, has benefited me most during this placement year. It has enabled me to have no inhibitions when working with more experienced people in the department and ask them to teach me something they are good at.
Very early on in this internship I realised that I am here not to prove myself or the skills I already possess but to try and acquire new skills and knowledge from the pool of brilliant, talented and experienced engineers I was working with. This attitude and willingness to learn is what I feel, has benefited me most during this placement year. It has enabled me to have no inhibitions when working with more experienced people in the department and ask them to teach me something they are good at.
What else are
you working on at National Instruments at the moment?
I joined NI as an Applications Engineer, where after my intense training of two months, I began supporting our customers. NI has about 35,000 companies as customers around the world in different sectors of engineering and my role as Applications Engineer is to support these customers using our products. I have to understand their engineering applications which could range from medical to aerospace to radio frequency related. Many at times I need to recreate their problems in our lab using the same products and then try and find a technical solution for them.
I joined NI as an Applications Engineer, where after my intense training of two months, I began supporting our customers. NI has about 35,000 companies as customers around the world in different sectors of engineering and my role as Applications Engineer is to support these customers using our products. I have to understand their engineering applications which could range from medical to aerospace to radio frequency related. Many at times I need to recreate their problems in our lab using the same products and then try and find a technical solution for them.
I was also
given the opportunity to do a three month stint/rotation in the technical sales
department as a technical sales engineer. These three months really opened my
eyes to the business side of engineering and gave me a different perspective of
the industry. My role was primarily understanding the application needs of our
customers and supporting them by advising on the right software and hardware
products to satisfy their needs. Many at times I had to match their
specifications with our products and produce a product list and quote for them.
I was mainly in-charge of business in Scotland and North East of England and
worked with a Field Engineer based in the area to support our business in the
area.
Tell us more
about the rowing event you organised as part of the NI team:
This was a fun event. Every year the Newbury Round table organises a massive charity event called Crafty Craft which involves building your own boat, forming a team and taking part in a boat race in the canal in Newbury. This year I was in-charge of organising our team. I began working on oganising teams to work on this event with me and I got some very talented people to fix our boat, paint it and also got some great rowers from the company. The theme for Crafty Craft this year was 'Brazilian Adventure' and we named our team 'myRIO Car-NI-val' – a pun on the latest NI product myRIO and NI for National Instruments.
This was a fun event. Every year the Newbury Round table organises a massive charity event called Crafty Craft which involves building your own boat, forming a team and taking part in a boat race in the canal in Newbury. This year I was in-charge of organising our team. I began working on oganising teams to work on this event with me and I got some very talented people to fix our boat, paint it and also got some great rowers from the company. The theme for Crafty Craft this year was 'Brazilian Adventure' and we named our team 'myRIO Car-NI-val' – a pun on the latest NI product myRIO and NI for National Instruments.
Monday, 14 October 2013
Meet our students: Maria Brancato, 3rd year Bioengineering student
Monday, 30 September 2013
It's physics that makes your body work...
 |
| Maryam Shariatzadeh, PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering The University of Sheffield |
"The body is an intricate, elegant, very complex machine made of equally complex and elegant parts."
Monday, 23 September 2013
Body building, but not as we know it...
Lindsey Dew is a PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Her work specifically looks at skin tissue engineering. Here she talks about tissue engineering, how she got into this exciting field and why women need to know what engineering actually involves in order to increase female representation within the profession.
Monday, 24 June 2013
Shruti Vasudev, student Bioengineer
BioEngineering student Shruti Vasudev was recently interviewed for the Times of India. In the article she talks about her experiences at the University of Sheffield and placement at National Instruments. You can view the Times of India article here: Raising the Bar.
Our own student media Intern, Phoebe Kimble-Wilde spoke to her about why she chose engineering, what interests her most and what she wants to do in the future. She also found out more about Shruti's hobbies and why she likes Sheffield.
Friday, 17 May 2013
My Sheffield Adventure
Ilida Ortega Asencio is a bioengineer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Her work includes stem cell research and a corneal implant that could reverse corneal blindness. Here, she talks about leaving Spain and her Sheffield Adventure.
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