• Question: If there was one engineering project you could work on what would it be?

    Asked by tezzahh to Alex, Claire, Kate, Marcus, Neil on 16 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Alex Lyness

      Alex Lyness answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hey tezzah,

      As an engineer you’re always trying to figure out how things are made, how they work and how they could be improved.

      There are sooo many cool and life-altering technology being developed right now it’s a shame I cannot chop and change disciplines all the time.

      I work with medical devices, as that is 1) what I’ve studied for, 2) I am good at and 3) I am passionate about. However, I always enjoy reading up on the latest developments by other engineers who are working on technologies that will shape this our lives over the next century such as; electric vehicles, virtual reality headsets, 3D printing, renewable energy sources and wearable electronics.

      Are there any that projects/technologies in particular that you would want to work on?

    • Photo: Claire Brockett

      Claire Brockett answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi tezzahh,
      I would have to agree with Alex, it would have to be something in medical engineering so that I would have the skills to contribute 🙂
      There are so many amazing things going on right now, and technology developments are incredible, so it’s an exciting place to work.
      If I was to think of one thing in my area, it would be the use of 3D printing to develop tissue scaffolds and structures – allowing the patients own body to repair itself rather than replacing joints and tissues with artificial bits. I think that is a really interesting prospect, and something I’d like to get involved with.

    • Photo: Marcus Johns

      Marcus Johns answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      If I could work on one engineering project and had all the necessary skills required, I would want to be involved in creating the spaceship that sends people to Mars. I’ve always had a fascination with space and enjoy reading science fiction, so a project where I could combine that with a job would be amazing.

      I’m sure I could find a way of combining my expertise with this project. There’s been talk that it may not be possible to send people to Mars because of the level of radiation that they’d be exposed to. Well, what if it was possible to heal the damage done to the person by the radiation at the same rate as the damage was done? Then the problem wouldn’t exist!

    • Photo: Kate Niehaus

      Kate Niehaus answered on 21 Jun 2014:

      I’d probably choose to work on similar sorts of projects to what I am doing now! I’m really excited by the possibility of using different biomarkers (e.g. cells or proteins or other things in the blood) to predict and monitor disease and to predict patient treatment response. This often combines genetics, lots of data, and a certain type of analysis called machine learning. This is exactly what I’m doing now, so I’m pretty happy! 🙂

Comments