From Monday 22nd June to Friday 26th June, I joined the School of Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering & Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol with their Engineering Work Experience placement.
During my work experience at SCEEM, I was lucky enough to have experienced, (virtually) through the magic of Blackboard Collaborate, many different sides of what goes into an engineering project. Not only the subject-specific knowledge, but I mostly feel as if I benefited from experiencing the general process of how a project is initially planned, developed and completed; as well as the conferences, idea sharing/discussing and trial and error that goes into it all.
Enthusiastic helpers and lecturers led a week of practical and engaging lecture-based work. It amazes me that they pulled off such an experience in lockdown!
A valuable lesson I learnt at SCEEM’s WEX opportunity was that, fundamentally, engineering seems to be about the thought processes behind everything that an Engineer does. All the questions that come up when solving a real-world problem and how to deal with them are a must-have in any Engineer. I feel safe to say that my analysis skills definitely toned up!
It’s impossible to mention the thought processes behind tasks without mentioning the inherent enthusiasm for their work that seeped out of all the helpers and seemingly infected me! As we broke out from our big group into break out groups, I felt entirely comfortable with how open and happy my leader was for us to contribute as little or as much as we liked, while still feeling challenged with the specifics of our task.
You may be wondering, what was our task? Well, put simply, we had to work alongside experienced students to create a device that collects data on air quality in its location. We had to use sensors for air quality, temperature and humidity, as well as later connecting it to a development board and then the internet. Through channels such as Internet of Things and Thingspeak (which I grew to love dearly).
For this, we used the MQ - 135 and DHT11 sensors which we joined to Wemos. This meant that it could send information through the Thingspeak channel and we could visualise the data. Honestly, this was the most exciting part, seeing the data come to life right before my eyes.
Every day, we were also lectured by experts in SCEEM fields. As the week progressed, I felt more and more comfortable to ask them questions and answer. I knew that they would explain well and I felt like observing and learning from them would teach me a lot - and it did.
Overall, my experience with the University of Bristol’s virtual Work Experience was really positive, and has inspired me to get back into learning to code. For that I’d like to give a big thanks to Caroline Higgins, Emma Duncan, Ed Nutting, Joe Brown, Lily Cooksley, Zoe Davidson, Finn Hobson, Dr. Simon Lock, Dr. Cameron Hall, and Dr. Theo Tryfanas at the School of Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering & Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol.
By: Hemlata Pant
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