Never be afraid to take every opportunity that comes your way
Helen Wright is a Teaching Technician for Bioengineering in the department of Multidisciplinary Engineering Education (MEE).
Watch: Our interview with Helen
I'm a teaching technician in bioengineering and I work in the engineering faculty's new Multidisciplinary Engineering Education building (the Diamond). I teach over 500 undergraduate and postgraduate students, but it's not just bioengineering students I teach - I teach across all disciplines of engineering too.
As well as delivering the practical teachings of laboratory skills, I also create and develop new practical activities that will allow our students to get hands-on experience and vital techniques that they can then use in their future careers.
Engineering is the practical and applied side of science and scientific knowledge. We use that scientific knowledge to make people's lives better so we take the laws of thermodynamics and use that to make better heating systems; we use our knowledge of anatomy to generate new tissues and generate artificial organs for transplant and this is what industry and research is all about - this is what employers want in our graduates so the career prospects for engineering graduates are absolutely fantastic.
The best thing about being an engineer is being in the lab. I'm in the lab with my students and we're working together to discover the answers by doing some real life science.
Helen Wright
Teaching technician
Here in engineering we would love to see more female students because it's such an exciting career prospect for them but to my current female students I would definitely say never be afraid to take every opportunity that comes your way, never be afraid to volunteer for things and get involved in the projects that you're interested in so everything you do - every task you do - is an opportunity to learn something whether that's a new skill or an opportunity to practice an old skill or maybe it's just an opportunity to meet new people and expand your network these are all things that will benefit you and help you develop in your future career.
We interviewed Helen in 2018.