Selena Chia is a final year mechatronics and biomedical engineering student at UNSW Sydney. She also works as a Student Systems Engineer at Cochlear. Find out how she juggles her busy week with work and uni, whilst making time for Korean language classes and pilates!
The start of my week is dedicated to working on my thesis, where I am working to develop a biosensing assay to improve point-of-care testing for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I conduct experiments in the biology lab on campus; focussed on optimising, evaluating, and understanding the CRISPR/Cas mechanisms that enable the biosensor. On these nights, I like to give my brain a break by going to the gym or eating out at a restaurant with my family.
Wednesdays and Fridays are my workdays when I head into the Cochlear Macquarie Park office. I am a part of the Research and Development department as a Student Systems Engineer. Cochlear is a global leader in hearing technology in implants and sound processors, and also, offers products such as accessories, fitting software and apps as part of the system. I am typically assigned to multiple work packages, that focus on the development of different parts of a system. These often involve collaborating with engineers from different teams such as Firmware, Electrical, V&V and more, to explore what is and isn’t possible. The project aims have often never been done before, which makes my work interesting and challenges me to think in innovative ways. These results provide guidance on how this small component should be developed and come together into a complex and integrated system that changes lives.
My favourite part about Cochlear is the people – as a student coming into the company, I am grateful to be surrounded by incredibly intelligent and supportive engineers all with different backgrounds and experiences. Every person is passionate about what they do and always has the time to sit down and share their knowledge. I see amazing teamwork and engineering efforts to empower people with hearing loss to connect with others, and it is extremely fulfilling to know that the work I do contributes to that.
In the morning, I enjoy doing something active, like pilates or a swim. I often do these activities with my friends, which helps start my day off right. Then, I have an Introduction to Korean class, which I took as an elective for fun. In the afternoon, I have my Robotics lab, where I have time to work with the Universal Robot’s UR5e for our major projects. Then, I use the rest of the night to study and end with some Netflix.
After a long week, I like to keep my Saturday days as a break. I love going to the markets to see what local businesses are offering or going out to a new restaurant to eat some yummy food. Before dinner, I head to the gym, and I spend the rest of the night catching up on uni content that I may have missed throughout the week. Sunday is a big reset day, where I do all my house chores, grocery shopping and meal prep. I also use this day to plan for the week with a big to-do list and work through big assignments for uni. I try to have an early night to be ready for the week ahead!
Interested in studying mechatronics or biomedical engineering at UNSW Sydney? Find out more by visiting the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering.