Question: What processes have you been involved in or singularly created that enhanced engineering performance capabilities? (I just like to know this from the view of an engineering who is in real action)

Anna Garcia-Teruel answered on 26 Mar 2021:

I am not sure this what the question was aiming for but I have been involved in a pair of activities to make the every day workflow easier/better so that engineers are more connected, and better informed to enhance collaboration and avoid work repetition.

I set-up a buddy system in our department, so that new doctorate students would be paired with more senior students to improve the network of people in our institute, facilitate the start of new students and avoid people feeling isolated which is a common problem in univeristy research where you are working by yourself on a single problem. This, I believe, enhanced the engineering performance capacilities, since people were better connected, knew whom to talk to for different problems etc.

I have also helped set up a clearer and more systematic file storage system and a data base in my particular research group, so that researchers can find and access the information they need more easily and avoid doing the same work someone already did again.

If this was aiming for an answer regarding enhancing the capabilities of an engineering solution, I have developed optimisation algorithms that automatically generate better performing wave energy converter designs. I worked with a company and applied these algorithms to their device, which resulted in a 40% improvement in the amount of power they could generate.