"The right way of thinking is more important than the right education."
What first made you think "I want to get into engineering"?
Honestly, for me, ending up in engineering was more of a happy accident than the result of following a lifelong dream. I didn’t really know what engineering was when I applied for university and I was almost graduating before I settled on a career path. Instead of focusing on an end goal, I aim to choose things that interest me along the way. I chose a mathematics degree because I like thinking logically and using a methodical approach to solve problems. From there, becoming an engineer at Dyson gave me the best opportunity to bring my scientific knowledge into the real world and to apply my learning to actual physical scenarios.
What do you do, day to day?
Today, I lead a small team of Fluid Dynamics Engineers. We are all specialists in airflow and thermals and we use our expertise in these areas to develop projects and offer guidance to the design teams. There is no such thing as a typical day for me. I can sometimes spend days on end working in the lab, getting hands-on with prototypes: making, mending, testing and improving them. Other days I’ll be processing the vast quantities of data I have collected, looking for trends and patterns in the results to help me understand the physics of a problem.
What would you say to aspiring engineers?
My advice for an aspiring engineer is to follow your interests, keep learning and don’t give up if you don’t have the traditional engineering background – the right way of thinking is more important than the right education.