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I was a bit of an all-rounder at school.
I enjoyed being creative but my strengths probably lay in the more technical subjects. A teacher recommended engineering as a way to combine both but I didn’t really understand what it was. I thought an engineer was the person who came to fix our school’s broken-down vending machine or worked on cars or had a greasy, manual job in a factory. That did not appeal to me, so I didn’t look into it any more.
Luckily it was 2003, the year that the Beagle 2 Mars lander launched into space.
I happened to be watching the news and saw Professor Colin Pillinger being interviewed about the mission, explaining how British engineers helped build this probe. If engineering involved designing such ground-breaking technology as space exploration missions it wasn’t at all what I thought it was. I was completely inspired and started looking into it properly.
I chose to do a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Surrey.
I liked the idea of the course with its strong research departments in space and robotics, but also how it was linked to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), which makes small satellites. After my second year I managed to do a placement year at SSTL. They were a great bunch and during that year some of us went on a camping trip. One night as we were lying back on the beach someone was pointing out what looked like shooting stars overhead. I was amazed to be told that they were in fact satellites and could quite possibly have been ones that my friends on that beach had worked on. It was an utterly surreal experience and one I’ll never forget.
Once I graduated, and with space experience already under my belt, I was lucky enough to be accepted on Airbus Defence and Space’s graduate scheme.
To start with I worked in various different mechanical engineering groups, analysing and testing the structures of spacecraft. I then saw an opportunity come up for a spacecraft structures engineer on the ExoMars Rover. This was basically the follow-on mission to what inspired me to be an engineer in the first place so, although it was a bit of a leap in the dark, I knew I had to apply. Unbelievably, at the age of 25, I landed my dream job. Right from the start, one of my favourite things was going down to the clean rooms and seeing hardware that I’d worked on being bolted onto the side of a spacecraft. It was really humbling to know that in your small way you are doing something that could make a really big impact.
Engineering is a challenging but rewarding industry to work in and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
The whole point of engineering is to design new things or to come up with new solutions to problems. This means that you have to keep curious and keep abreast of what is going on in other industries, as you might be able to apply similar techniques or ideas to your problems. I like that because it means it never gets boring – there’s always a new challenge. And, far from what I used to think at school, now that I’m an engineer I can see just how much creativity goes into the job.
Being one of just a handful of women in a male-dominated field has had its highs and lows.
That dash to the loo in the film Hidden Figures is not fiction. Historically, those facilities for women were just not there. Equally, when I first wanted to go into the test facilities, the smallest steel-cap boots I could find in the building were a male size eight. I’m a female size three. Although it may only seem a trivial thing to change, somebody’s got to change it and, if you’re the first one doing it, although it’s a bit of an extra faff for you, once more of us come through the system then we flush out those problems.
I’m a massive introvert which may seem an odd thing to admit considering how often I’ve appeared on telly, on programmes like Stargazing Live and The Sky at Night, and been on stage giving talks at various events including at schools and universities.
The reason I do this is because I was inspired to be an engineer having heard someone talk about engineering on the telly, and so I gladly take these opportunities to educate young people and the broader public about what engineering is, and what we do.
My advice to anyone thinking about a career in engineering is to dream big.
Don’t put limitations on what you think you can achieve. I never thought I’d get a job in the space industry, let alone landing my dream job at the age of just 25. There are a lot of exciting opportunities out there in engineering and you don’t have to be the best of the best to get them. You just have to be willing to work hard and keep growing.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.