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Pegah Garousi

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Q&A WITH EngHERO: Pegah Garousi

Pegah is a Technical Consultant at CiRBA Inc. She provides consulting services for capacity management of data centres including architecture and design, installation and configuration of software in enterprise environments and provides training to customers across the world.

Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew about engineering back when you were in high school?

In high school, I knew that engineering wouldn’t be easy but I didn’t know how much work and hours I had to put in for my studies. I had to completely change my studying techniques from the way I studied in high school in order to find the best and most efficient way of studying.

Q: What’s your proudest accomplishment as an engineer?

My proudest accomplishment as an engineer would be working on complex projects and being recognized for the work that I’ve done while being one of a few females. This always been a great accomplishment and it has greatly encouraged me to work even harder.

Q: Tell me about a time in your career when your work has been about discovery or curiosity?

I have always been a very curious person who always wants to make sure I have an in-depth understanding of how things are done and why. A few times, my curiosity has made me discover issues that no one else has discovered before and I was able to provide a solution that exceeded the one already in place.

Q: What are you doing these days?

I am a Technical Consultant at CiRBA Inc. I provide consulting services for the capacity management of data centres including architecture and design, installation and configuration of software in enterprise environments, integration, customization, operation of analyses and deliver training to customers across the world.

I studied Software Engineering at the University of Ottawa, which gave me a solid background on the life cycle of software development (requirement gathering, architecture and design, implementation, testing, deployment and support).

During my second to third year of university, I worked part-time as a Quality Assurance Analyst and changed to a Software Developer position in my last year of university. After graduation, I was interested in project management but having just graduated, I needed more experience before entering that role. And so I became a Systems Engineer, which entailed designing and managing complex engineering projects over their life cycles. Having this experience made me realize that I enjoyed solving technical problems than managing projects and so I have decided to continue my career in that.

Q: Do you feel your work contributes to society? How so?

Society today is being so technology driven, working in IT contributes a lot to the society. My work helps many of the Global 3000 companies who use CiRBA software to create leaner and more reliable data centres. With our professional services, we provide specialist advice to help reduce costs and allow them to be more efficient as well as allowing them to achieve any other business requirements by providing custom solutions.

Q: Why do we need more female engineers?

I think it’s a very common mistake that engineering is solely for men. There are currently more men than women in engineering but this doesn’t mean that it’s more difficult for women to be successful. There were about 12-15 females in different subjects of engineering in my year and we were all considered top of our classes.

I’m glad I picked engineering as I realized how interesting it was. It helps you to understand how anything around you works and it allows you to eventually be the engineer who creates one of those things.

Q: Do you think it is important for women to be involved in engineering? Or do you think having more males is sufficient and that it doesn’t really make a difference whether there are more women or not?

I believe that more women should be involved in engineering and that the male-driven stereotype should be broken. There are so much that women can contribute. Studies have proven that women are better at multitasking (which is something that is very important in a work environment). So many distractions could potentially impact the quality of your work. Women are more organized, even under pressure. During a study, they have observed that women spend more time thinking at the beginning whereas men tend to have impulses to jump in way too quickly.

In conclusion, being able to multitask effectively and think things through from the beginning are skills that women have which will give them the advantage over men. Women will not waste any time and/or money at a later stage in the project.

Kim Farwell

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Q&A WITH ENGHERO: Kim Farwell

Kim is a senior technical advisor for extraction and she is the first female to reach this position in her company, Syncrude Canada Ltd. She got there by getting a chemical engineering degree, an MBA and a certificate in oil sands technology.

Kim Farwell Journey Map

Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew about engineering back when you were in high school?

I wish I knew that I was going to enjoy it as much as I do.

Q: What’s your proudest accomplishment as an engineer?

I’m proud of that I received the Early Accomplishment Award and was president of APEGA in 2010. I’m also proud of the time I figured out a very interesting technical problem at the plant.

Q: Tell me about a time in your career when your work has been about discovery or curiosity?

My work was about discovery and curiosity when I solved a problem at the plant. A geologist and I figured out why oils weren’t coming off the separator by applying the fundamentals we had learned to real life.

Q: What are you doing these days?

My job now is a senior technical advisor for extraction and I’m the first female to reach this position in my company, Syncrude Canada Ltd. I got there by getting a chemical engineering degree, an MBA and a certificate in oil sands technology. I also have a co-op degree with six work terms, all with different companies. When I started out in high school, I was planning to be a political journalist but my friend convinced me to enter a Popsicle stick bridge contest. We drilled holes in the Popsicle sticks, put ribbons through them and won.

This is when I really started to consider engineering as a career path. Also, I went to Shad Valley and I worked with Xerox to study a pigment used for photocopiers. This helped me realize that I wanted to work in the field of chemistry.

Q: Do you feel your work contributes to society? How so?

I do. I secure Canada’s energy future with every drop of oil. My work provides jobs and energy to the world-without any ethical issues like in Nigeria or environmental issues.

Q: Why do we need more female engineers?

We need more female engineers because engineering is very much a team effort. You need a team of diverse group of people so they can solve problems and female engineers bring a different skill set.

Q: If you could recommend something for girls in high school what would it be?

I would recommend that you make lots of female friends. They are going to give you strength in all your tough times, ground you when you’re being mistreated and encourage you to never give up.

Abigail Hutty

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Q&A WITH EngHERO: Abigail Hutty

Abbie Hutty is a Spacecraft Structures Engineer at Airbus Defense and Space. She helped create the ExoMars rover , which is the Mars Rover prototype, and her job involves making technical decisions about the design development on the rover structure. She is an artist and an engineer and she won the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2013.

Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew about engineering back when you were in high school?

That engineering is part of pretty much everything in our daily lives, and how high tech and cutting edge technology is always developed by a team of engineers! When I was at high school I shared the common misconception that “Engineers” were the people that came out to fix your home appliances in their overalls- I didn’t realize it included the design and development side too.

Q: What’s your proudest accomplishment as an engineer?

There are satellites in orbit with bits on them designed by me! That’s a pretty great feeling. You can see satellites sometimes with the naked eye, when the sun has set on Earth but is still shining on thing up in orbit- as they flash in the light from the sun they look like shooting stars. It’s great to go out and look up and know that something on that “shooting star” was once just an idea in your mind, that you developed and perfected, had made, and is now functioning all that way away!

Q: Tell me about a time in your career when your work has been about discovery or curiosity?

A lot of Airbus’ Science focused space missions are all about curiosity and discovery- exploring new worlds, imaging other planets, learning about our solar system, our galaxy, our universe. On a personal level though, the challenge of having to design such missions is so great that I am constantly having to learn about new things- for example today it was how the dust environment on Mars abrades the Materials we are designing our rover out of. You have to stay curious, and love learning new things and finding out about stuff like that.

Q: What are you doing these days?

I am a Spacecraft Structures Engineer at Airbus Defence and Space. My project is the ExoMars Rover- which means I am responsible for making sure the design is strong enough to withstand the launch, entry, descent and landing, and driving around on the surface, whilst also fulfilling all the secondary requirements that the structure fulfils- like thermal insulation, bio-containment, electrical grounding, and so on.

Q: Do you feel your work contributes to society? How so?

My work is helping to further mankind’s understanding of the Universe- so at the highest level, the findings from our missions contribute to society. On a more tangible level, though, discoveries and developments made in the Space industry to meet the unusual requirements up there, often then our found to have uses down on earth- like Teflon, which is now used on non-stick pans- that was developed as a Space material. You never know how something that you develop will one day be used.

Q: Why do we need more female engineers?

We need more engineers in general- a lot of the world’s biggest problems need engineers to fix them- power production, a growing population, an ageing population. Engineers, solve problems, and improve things. We don’t have enough engineers qualifying now to meet the future demand- so we need to increase the numbers entering the profession. If we aren’t targeting females as well as males we are missing out on half our potential recruits!

Q: What initially intrigued you to go into engineering?

I was first inspired to consider engineering when I saw a European Mars mission on the news, and saw that British engineers were working on parts of it. Knowing that such exciting projects were going on in the UK was a real light bulb moment for me- I had no idea. We always hear that high tech industries in the US or China are making these big leaps forward- but is going on all over the world, just some nations are less good at publicising their successes. Now I work on a Mars Mission- the very thing that inspired me to consider engineering in the first place!

Q: How did your project concerning the ExoMars Rover come about? What initiated this project? What new information do engineers and scientists plan to gain from this project?

ExoMars is a European Space agency mission- and its primary goal is to search for signs of life, past or present, on Mars. We have a large drill on board that can drill down up to 2m below the Martian surface, to where there is both protection from the harsh radiation environment at the surface, and where there are still water ice deposits. If life still exists on Mars, that’s where we expect to find it! No rover mission has ever had the capability before to take anything other than surface samples- so this is a really exciting part of the mission. We could be answering the question of whether we are alone in the Universe, or whether there is life right here in our own solar system- that would be a huge discovery.

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Check out Abigail on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81J40tcMDX4