Student story - Mark Rogers
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Do you know the way to San Jose? Mark does!
From battery to bridge, you never know where your placement will take you...
I spent my year out with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), which is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence. I was based at Fort Halstead in Sevenoaks, Kent. A lot of the work done at Dstl is of a sensitive nature and for that reason all employees are vetted before being employed.
During my time with Dstl in the Security Sciences Department I found myself working on two projects. One of these was a package of work to assess a new battery technology and compare its performance against state of the art technology currently available for both primary and secondary cells. In order to do this I had to understand and simulate the operational scenarios in which the technology would function. I created a test regime to put all of the cells through so that I could then compare the data and collate my findings into a report at the end. Part of the task included researching COTS (commercial off the shelf) cells and purchasing them.
Whilst working at Dstl I found that I was given a lot of trust from the outset and treated like a long term member of the group, often working unsupervised. This enabled me to take a task and create my own solutions, all the while keeping my project managers informed. This allowed me to demonstrate my creativity in response to problems that arose quite quickly. I found it easy to talk to technical experts about the work and really enjoyed my time on placement.
The highlight of my placement year was being asked to go to the printed electronics conference in San José, USA. I went with a colleague in the COTS evaluation team, who test all manner of emerging technologies from around the world – their inspiration and research comes from internal information, trade magazines, personal contacts in industry and internet searches. We were tasked with gathering information from the conference and lectures and then writing a visit report on our return.
During the year, I worked with a range of people including researchers, Project Managers and Principal Scientists which boosted my confidence to speak up and question things and also gained real experience in time management and people skills. Working on my own initiative gave me quite a bit of freedom and allowed me to demonstrate my competence and my final report became part of a customer deliverable which was really satisfying. I was sad to leave as my placement year has really made me see what I want to do upon graduating. It opened my eyes to the breadth of work opportunities possible with my degree subject.
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