Kate Walker

Every new product that is made has to have someone that designed it and worked out how best to manufacture it - that's the job of a product design engineer.

Designing something new or something better than what's already available and then figuring out how to make their design a reality so that their idea can be turned into a real working product is what a design engineer does every day.

They act as a bridge between pure designers and engineers and work as problem solvers to enable the team to reach the best possible design that can be made into a working product.

Post 16 Education: AS Level Chemistry & Fine Art; A Levels Maths, Further Maths, Physics & General Studies

Higher Education: MEng Product Design Engineering, Loughborough University

Why did you choose Product Design Engineering?

I knew I liked maths, physics and design and wanted to end up designing real life products that people would use on a daily basis. I found my ideal course after realising that I wanted to do an engineering based design job and after searching for this online found a course I didn't know existed when I’d first thought about degrees.

Product Design Engineering is a mixture of maths, science, design and technology and involves designing and developing functional products that can be sold by businesses. The type of products you design depends on the industry you're working in and where your interests lie but the principles for designing and manufacturing new products is very similar across the board.

Kate’s experience as a student 

I really enjoyed university, it gave me the chance to study exactly what I was interested in and to work on really interesting projects where I got to design and develop completely new things that no one had ever done before. 

As well as learning more about the subjects I was interested in when I started my degree, I've also been able to pick up and develop new interests such as enterprise, 3D printing and learning another language.

Kate’s Career 

I now work for myself as part of a company that I set up during my degree that designs and manufactured 3D printed upper limb prosthetics for children. 

The idea for the company was born out of my 3rd year dissertation project and after completing my dissertation I decided I wanted to turn the idea into reality and so started my company ExpHand Prosthetics. 

I graduated in July 2019 and since then have been working for myself full time.