Nubia, our GIE Club student ambassador is about to finish her 5-year degree in Electrical Engineering Honours/Master of Biomedical Engineering. Read about all the cool things she gets up to during a typical uni week and reach out to her if you have any questions!
I love starting the week off with a morning coastal walk. I put on a podcast or bring along a family member/friend for a short walk to start the day off right.
I spend most of my day working through my thesis (big year-long project) in the labs. This involves designing a robot aimed at helping neuroscience researchers understand how humans feel a sense of touch.
This will one day be used to understand how hand movements are controlled and ultimately improve the quality of people’s lives. It’s really rewarding to be able to do meaningful work and still have fun throughout the process.
Throughout the day I design how the robot will function, run lots of simulations to make sure it’s working as intended or implement the physical product by putting the different components together and coding the functionality with help from PhD students and researchers.
In the evening I go to my weekly life drawing class with my friends to unwind from studying and pick up a few new techniques.
I decide to take this day to focus on one course which is my microelectronics uni course. I attend the online lecture from home and revise content from the previous week so that I can start my lab exercises.
This course is all about designing and analysing integrated circuits (ICs) which are the tiny electronic chips that are used to design computers, phones and almost any electronic device you might come across in your everyday life. They are extremely intricate and require precise processes to make sure they are designed correctly. I figure out exactly how the components will be orientated and what materials will be used, as well as the cost to manufacture it. I take a lunch break to go to a cafe with my friend and then go back home to finish studying.
In the early afternoon, I go to my student’s house to give a weekly piano lesson, and after that I go sprint training at the Eastern Suburbs Athletics Track near uni with the UNSW athletics team.
I spend the morning preparing for my meeting with my thesis supervisor to summarise my project progress over the past week and receive some advice and guidance on how to proceed. I continue working on my thesis project at uni, with the company of my friends who are studying different degrees.
In the afternoon, I have my weekly Girls in Engineering (GIE) Club meeting with Debbie, UNSW Women in Engineering Manager and Sofia a fellow student ambassador and spend the rest of the evening putting together engineering workshops for high school girls!
Today is dedicated to my Mechanics of the Human Body uni course to learn more about the analysis of the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system. My cohort and I go into the lab to run some experiments using a cool motion capture system. We record different movements to analyse and understand muscle force and power contributions.
I go for a dip in the ocean in the afternoon and read my book in the sun for a little while. In the evening I go to sprint training again and do a slightly different session. The entire athletics team go out for dinner afterwards to catch up.
I use my Fridays to catch up on lectures and write notes for all my courses. I start the day early and end the day in the early afternoon, so I have time to work on my other hobbies and catch up with friends.
On Saturday mornings, I train at Centennial Park near UNSW with my athletics team or do a gym workout in my backyard if I want to sleep in. I spend the day catching up with friends or family at the local park or beach if the weather’s nice or indoors to watch movies or bake/cook if it’s cold and rainy. In the evenings I either have a night in to play some piano and read or go dancing with my friends.
On Sundays I typically go on a day trip to explore areas further from home, like Manly or Cronulla, and come home in the afternoon to catch up on uni work and work through my major assignments and/or thesis project.
If you have any questions for Nubia, email wie@unsw.edu.au and we can pass them on to her. If you would like to find out more about studying Electrical Engineering at UNSW, visit the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications.