Question: How did you get into this industry ?

Charnett Chau answered on 10 Jun 2019:

Honestly – this was not planned.
I was always good at maths and sciences in school so people around me back then told me since I like those subject then does that mean you’ll want to do medicine or engineering at university. When I was in school the normal thing to do is to go university and so when I came to choosing subjects I picked what I was good at and liked the sound of.

I didn’t really know what Biochemical Engineering (the engineering field I am in) was when I was 18, just knew that I wanted to keep learning biology, maths and physics. It worked out well.
I’ve always liked the idea of volunteering so after my degree I went to Tanzania and worked on a water sanitation project. This was loosely linked with my engineering degree but more on trying to make the village cleaner and healthier. That was when I put my learning to practice.

Because I enjoyed my time in Tanzania, I was to solve issues and when I came about a PhD project on making drug manufacturing more sustainable and greener, it’ll be a great use of my degree. So there I was a Biochemical Engineer and an Environmental Engineer at the same time.

Now I’ve done my PhD, an opportunity came where my old boss asked me whether I’ll be interested to eliminate plastic waste doing a similar thing I did before.

I personally think, you should follow your heart in terms of what you want to do, doing an engineering degree is a great start, but after that you can change the type of engineer you are once you know what you’re passionate about.