Question: When you say "an engineer's day is always different," what kind of things do you get up to?

Sophie Cox answered on 10 Mar 2017:

Hi YoshiKwama,

Thanks for your question.

Well let’s take this week for example.

Monday
We always start our week with our team meeting, which is always a lot of fun getting to here what everyone has been up to last week. Then I had a meeting at a hospital to discuss a new project. Lunch and then some time in the lab, I have to feed my cellular materials on Mon, Wed and Fri.

Tuesday
I had a meeting first thing to talk about applying for some funding to start a new project. Then the rest of the day I was on a course for teaching. I’ve just been promoted to a lecturer which means I have to teach our undergraduates. To support me doing this I have to do a teaching qualification, kinda like your school teachers have.

Wednesday
I had to do a tutorial for some students. Then I went to a training session on media engagement, we have to try and tell the world about what we are doing to help support funding and promotion of our work. It was pretty good and I got a free lunch 🙂
After that I spend some time with some of my students looking over some data they had collected from experiments and trying to understand what was going on. Then I had a meeting with two colleagues about a project we are doing 3d printing titanium implants.
Then I went into the labs for a few hours to feed my cells and run some experiments.

Thursday
I met with one of my PhD student (like some of the other engineers are) to talk about his progress. Then I did a live chat on here with a school. After that I had a meeting with a patent attorney to talk about what experiments to do next to strength our work and make it more attractive for a company to buy.

Friday
Today I’ve been at home because I’m not feeling very well but I’m starting to feel a bit better.

Hope that gives you an idea about what I do as an engineer.

🙂