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Asked by Mona_Lisa_Penguin to Alejandra, Ana, Daniel, Sophie, Todd, Zach on 10 Mar 2017.
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Daniel Morse answered on 10 Mar 2017:
For me this is within the model development. I had little engineering experience at the time, and when things went wrong (which they did a lot!), it was hard to problem solve and find out why and what to change to fix it.
This was a really difficult period, but there is a lot of support available here too, which was very useful. It is a great feeling to be able to make progress with things, even when you have some big problems or barriers too. And this can be applied to every day life!
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Alejandra Aranceta answered on 10 Mar 2017:
Hi Mona Lisa Penguin,
Yes, this happens constantly, we are currently living in a fast paced world, and we need to learn to adapt accordingly, and this means that our engineering skills have to evolve too, in order to fit in this fast paced world!
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Ana Gallego answered on 11 Mar 2017:
Facing problems is almost the definition of ‘engineer’. It happens all the time, when something perhaps hasn’t been made properly or when it is a new thing, sometimes it can be challenging.
But remember the golden rule of engineering: if you can’t solve the problem, just break it down into small chunks and try solving them first. Always works.
And even if you get stuck, there is always books, scientific papers and experts that you can call for help.Problems are always an opportunity to learn something new.
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Sophie Cox answered on 11 Mar 2017:
Hi Mona_Lisa_Penguin,
That’s a good question and like some of the other engineers have already said problems are what we engineers are all about. Coming across problems is a good thing because that gives us something to solve! Engineering training is usually centred around developing skills to adapt your knowledge to solve different problems. Sometimes knowing how to solve a problem is really hard and I find breaking down the problem into little pieces really helps. Also talking about it with other people in our team to get different perspectives is always really helpful!
One specific problem we are working on at the moment is how to treat a disease called heterotopic ossification (HO). This is basically where bone forms where it shouldn’t, for example in muscles or soft tissue. It’s a disease which is really common in people who have been involved in big traumatic incidents, such as military personel who have been in an explosion. We have identified a chemical that is capable of stopping HO from forming and have shown that it works in the lab but now we need to figure out how to deliver this to people. It’s pretty difficult because the chemical we are trying to deliver is really highly charged, which means that it changes the other materials we are trying to mix it with. One of our students is going to spend his PhD trying to figure this out and testing it out more in the lab. Fingers crossed we can get it to work!
🙂
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Todd Burton answered on 13 Mar 2017:
In researching the unknown i face this quite often. When i first started my PhD i had little knowledge of CAD (computer aided design) which has become a big part of my work and so i had to self teach. I’ve also had to come to grips with computational fluid dynamics using a computer to see how a liquid might flow through a system. I have had to broaden the mechanical engineering side of my knowledge somewhat.
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