Nicole Analise

There is engineering in everything!

There are lots of exciting industries and roles you could get into with a Product Design Engineering degree.

For me, it helped me develop not only my technical skills but strongly developed my soft skills as well, which has been incredibly useful in projects at work. 

'Crossover' modules within my degree such as software engineering and project management have been useful to build a foundation going into industry as a Professional Engineer. 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 Computing; A Levels Maths, Physics & Business Studies

Higher Education: BEng Product Design Engineering, Loughborough University

Why did you choose Product Design Engineering?

Since I was little I knew I wanted to make an impact to the world in one way or another. The answer to "When I grow up I want to be..." changed many times, but the answers generally fell under STEM roles. I am both creative and a problem solver, so Product Design Engineering was the best of both worlds.

Product Design Engineering allows you to express your creativity and innovative thinking and compliments it with the theory of how things work and why they work the way they do.

Nicole’s experience as a student 

I chose Loughborough because it had my dream course that encompassed my interests.

Not only does it have excellent engineering facilities, it has awesome sporting facilities too. As a competitive cheerleader it was also my dream to compete with the UK's best university cheerleading team. As a first-team cheerleader I was part of the team that won Grand Champions and National Champions!

Amongst the sporting highlights there were so many opportunities to volunteer and develop my skills that have helped me land a job professionally, such as leadership and coaching.

Nicole’s Career 

I am a Graduate Engineer at Siemens Rail Infrastructure. I started with Siemens as part of my placement year and haven't left since! I was offered a graduate job straight after my internship, which is a massive potential perk of doing a placement year as part of a degree. 

I am currently working on the Crossrail project, actively contributing to the delivery of the communication and control system for new underground line in London, the Elizabeth line.

Throughout my placements I have also experienced other departments such as bids & tendering, project management, construction, business development and technical field services. I also recently gained my Engineering Technician accreditation with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

George’s experience as a student

I loved my time at University. Don’t get me wrong, my time at Loughborough was very different to my time at Imperial. I went to Imperial at the age of 24 and I had already ‘been there done that’ as a student at Loughborough so Imperial was very much about networking and taking advantage of that. Loughborough was a great experience and I still have my mates from there today.

George’s Career

By the end of finishing my PG degree in 2018, we had raised around £70k in grants and awards to try and see if our breathing research had potential for early detection of sepsis through continuous breathing monitoring. Fast forward a year to the end of 2019 and we have since founded the business (SPYRAS) where I lead as CEO in a team of 5. Building on our knowledge and the team we have won numerous national awards; including the Mayor of London Entrepreneur of the Year, Royal Academy of Engineering labelling me as ‘The UKs most promising engineering CEO’ and Spyras a runner up in the SantanderUK Universities competition! To kick-start 2020 off we were thrilled to receive a £310k Innovate UK grant means we are looking to develop our breathing technologies and analytics for the sports and consumer market where we can provide analysis on breathing pattern, volume and gases.

As a business, we focus hard on recruiting top software engineering talent with their ability to code hardware and software solutions.

Who knows where you are going to end up! I have friends who did engineering who are now in finance, lawyers who are now medical students. The main thing is that they took a degree that allowed them to develop core foundations and challenge thinking, all of which has led to them being leaders in their industry and given them the foundations to pivot their career as they please. Don’t view it as the ‘Be all and end all’ if you pick the wrong subject, just decide on what will build you and the skillsets you have. I decided to invest in myself and build the best foundations for myself by doing an engineering related degree.