University of Tasmania, Australia

Course

Bachelor of Engineering with Honours

Story

Daniel Howes Graduated in 2003 with Honours in Mechanical Engineering. He started work with GHD in the Building Services of their Hobart office. Two years later saw him seconded to their Brisbane office where he worked in the Mining and Industry Group. He found this very challenging and six months later was seconded to Mt Isa to work on a major shut down of the copper smelter that takes place every four years. He described this experience as brilliant.

He then thought it was time to get out and see more of the world. He spent three months traveling around Europe after which he applied for a position with an English company Kingshaw Associates who are Building Services Consultants and like to work on green and renewable projects.

After twelve months he is still working with this same company and is now applying for a Visa to stay on and work for at least another 12 months.

Course

Bachelor of Engineering

Story

Fabian Kaica graduated in 1981 in Mechanical Engineering and has worked in the Australian Electricity Industry for almost 30 years. Fabian is currently Hydro Tasmania's Principal Project Engineer responsible for the major modernisation of Hydro Power Plants across Tasmania.

Fabian is proud to be the third generation of his family to work for Hydro Tasmania and is passionate about bringing world class engineering to Hydro Tasmania and its application to major hydro plants as they are modernised to high efficiency, capacity and performance.

Fabian is the current Hydro Tasmania representative for:

1. World Wide Hydro Plant Life Interest Group - facilitated by the Canadian Electricity Association Tech Inc
2. Australasian Hydro Power Engineering Exchange

One of Fabian's key achievements(and his team)was winning a 2009 Engineers Australia National Excellence Award for World Class Hydro Machine Operation - this award recognises over 10 years of continuous engineering improvement to deliver world class hydro machine performance.

Course

Bachelor of Engineering with Honours

Story

After graduating from UTAS in 1993, Justin Ridge undertook postgraduate studies in the United States. He was a senior research engineer with Nokia Research Center in Dallas, Texas, and recently joined Nokia's Standardization and Industry Relations Unit.

Justin's specialty is video and multimedia, an interest that grew out of his UTAS honours project. He was a member of Nokia's video codec research team, working on the design of H.264/AVC and later scalable video coding (SVC). You probably "use" his work without even realising it H.264/AVC is used to store or transmit video in devices ranging from the Apple iPod, Sony PSP and Blu-Ray DVDs to DVB-T television broadcasts, and of course Nokia phones. He is currently working on the new U.S. mobile TV standard, ATSC-M/H, and is involved in business strategy development for video codecs within Nokia.

Course

Bachelor of Engineering with Honours

Story

Unsure of which career direction to take, Jerome ventured down the challenging road of engineering, inspired by the notion that engineering is the creative application of science. Upon graduation, he found employment in the wind energy team at Hydro Tasmania. This opportunity allowed him to work on projects across Australia, Asia and Africa, gaining both technical ability and an understanding of the wind energy industry in general. In 2008, he teamed up with two other UTAS graduates to win the Babcock and Brown Power Prize in the Warren Centre's National Energy Essay Competition, discussing how Australia should tackle the next fifty to one hundred years of energy demand and generation. A return to university in 2010 will see Jerome investigate wind flow over cliffs and the corresponding impact on wind turbines.

Course

Bachelor of Engineering with Honours

Story

Nyssa Skilton graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Engineering Degree with Honours majoring in mechanical engineering, whilst at the same time completing a Bachelor of Arts. The latter degree was taken to fulfill her enjoyment for her natural flair of writing. Whilst doing her Engineering Degree, Nyssa carried out her industrial placement with a company where she was given the assignment of designing a scissor lift apparatus to help workers lift heavy and awkward sheets of plasterboard. This apparatus was later built and is now in use at the company.

Her honours thesis was on Public Perceptions of Engineers. She felt that Engineers and the profession were not portrayed as "attractive" in the public spotlight, so causing less numbers of students to consider this as a career path. So when invited to become part of the School of Engineering's marketing team, she was very happy to participate by talking to school and college students around Tasmania, not only advising on the degree course and career pathways, but also on her status of being "one of the few" females within Engineering.

With her two degrees under her belt, Nyssa has applied her writing skills to venture into the world of journalism. She is now working at The Advocate Newspaper on Tasmanias North West Coast. Next year will be heading further north to work for the Canberra Times.

Nyssa said "doing engineering at uni pushed me beyond what I thought I, especially my brain, was capable of", and so has taken from engineering, the mindset that she can handle anything her work has to throw at her.