• Question: What is the most interesting part about your job

    Asked by M-dawg to Dominic, Maedeh, Matthew, Matt, Monica on 4 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by Maddie.
    • Photo: Dominic Eggbeer

      Dominic Eggbeer answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      I have to interpret the needs of surgeons, create a design brief, come up with a solution, employ engineering and deliver a service. This has to be done in the space of a few days where most industry would typically take months or years. The most interesting bit is design – coming up with a novel solution that will only be used for a single (but complex) procedure.

    • Photo: Maedeh Borhani

      Maedeh Borhani answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      The best part is when I sit down with the hand surgeons, physiotherapists and clinicians to explain what my data means.

    • Photo: Matthew Oldfield

      Matthew Oldfield answered on 6 Mar 2016:

      The thing I find most interesting about engineering is how the technology and science that I have learned can be applied to problems in the real world. It is strange to think that what I learned from a blackboard in a university lecture theatre really does help in the design of a steerable needle for brain surgery or a bicycle light that doesn’t need a battery. But it really does.

      Talking to people who have a problem that they want to solve is also incredibly interesting. Often, even while the conversation is going on, ideas will bounce around my head for ways to try and help or things that could be built. Finding these problems, and then the solution, is often one of the most interesting parts of the job. For example, I was talking to a surgeon about a problem they were having in holding some skin out of the way during surgery. Listening to him describe the surgery was fascinating but so were the discussions we had about how, as an engineer, I would be able to make a better device for them.

    • Photo: Monica Rozeik

      Monica Rozeik answered on 6 Mar 2016:

      I find learning more and more about the heart and heart surgery to be the most interesting part. It lets me realise there’s a lot of things I need to think about when designing a device like heart valves.

      I have to think about what will happen to the blood, or if my valve will open as fast as a normal valve or if it can last very long in the human body.

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