An Lam completed her degree in mechanical and biomedical engineering at Flinders University last year, and quickly secured a role as a hardware/systems engineer in the defence sector.

What enticed you towards engineering?

I like how versatile engineering is; the toolbox of skills that engineers develop can be applied to so many different fields. From medical devices to artificial intelligence and everything in between, engineers can contribute so much to our society’s future. I think it makes for a very interesting career.

What would you consider your greatest success in using your skills to solve an engineering problem?

I would consider my 20-week practicum at Nanyang Polytechnic to be a success, where I worked on a biomimicry project to develop impact-absorbing materials for hip protectors. I was able to get involved in experimentation processes within a team, and was given the freedom to independently research an algorithm to predict material properties, which I implemented in a MATLAB code.

The experience challenged me and called on skills developed in my preceding years of study. I found it to be very rewarding and memorable.

Can you share an example of when you needed to be particularly creative?

When I took a particularly challenging mechanical topic in my third year there was a practical report that required pages and pages of calculations. It turned out to be very tedious, so I took a creative approach and wrote some code to crunch all the numbers for me.

I find coding to be a very creative process as everyone has a unique way of thinking about things and solving problems. By automating some of my work with a program, I was able to improve my workflow and efficiency tremendously. Not only that, it was much more fun and engaging than doing the repetitive calculations by hand.

How do you attack a big challenge, or what do you do when the answer or way forward is not clear?

I like to make sure that I’ve done my reading on the subject – my friends know that I had a silly number of browser windows with a hundred tabs open pretty much constantly throughout uni! Having the right background knowledge helps me to evaluate my options, and if the answer is still unclear then, I’d go ahead and make an educated guess. It’s sometimes better to just try something out with the understanding that it might go wrong, as the learning process generally helps you find your way to the right answer anyway.

What words of wisdom would you share with your high school self?

I would tell her to slow down and remind her it’s okay to be unsure of what path your career will take.

I never imagined how my uni experience would turn out or where I’d be working today so I think that while it’s important to have goals and ambition, it’s also important to be opened minded and able to adapt as opportunities open up to you.

To draw on some wisdom that Gerry Doyle, CEO of Tonkin Consulting, shared with me: you just need to know what you’re doing now and what your next step will be – anything beyond that can be figured out as you go.