My name is Suk Kinch.
I'm a Senior Design and
Development Engineer at Renishaw.
So I work within the Neurological
Division and what we do here at Renishaw is create
neurological products for
functional neurosurgery.
Within that, we have a neuromate
stereotactic robot, so stereotactic
is a 3 dimensional coordinate system
of placing things accurately,
which is why it's why it's linked to Renishaw,
and then I've also worked on
the drug delivery system.
So Renshaw again prides itself on innovation
and the drug delivery system is an
example of something that's really novel.
It's a system
of catheters that's implanted to the brain.
We have a 3D implanted port
that sits on the side of the head,
that which people can reaccess,
and what this allows us to do is
look and investigate for
drugs that can treat for life-limiting
neurological conditions.
So we've used that
to treat Parkinson's in
our recent clinical trial.
And we've also used that on a
humanitarian basis for treating
children with brain tumours.
So what I love about engineering
is the problem solving aspect of it
and the collaborative approach
that we have to doing that so we can
start off with a with a blank page
and you know we work together, we,
you know,
get these ideas and we start off with
something that's just the sketch and
then we end up with something like,
you know, a part in your hand
or a product that's on a person and
that's, you know, that whole life cycle
is what, you know, excites me.
So I took a very academic route
to where I got to today.
So I
went from doing A Levels to
doing university,
I did a masters in engineering
at Southampton.
There I got into a third year project
looking at medical engineering so I
decided to stay and do a PhD to sort of
get to know a bit more around healthcare
and engineering there and from there
I ended up at Renishaw on the graduate scheme
and have been moving on
until the senior position since then.
Engineering is definitely a male dominated area,
so women make up about
10 or 11% of the workforce
in this country, but
for me it's been quite a positive
experience. Where I work at Renishaw
we are very much respected and valued
for who we are within working
in the Neurological Division and our
ratios are much better than that,
so we probably have about a 60/40 split.
And you know,
Renishaw also promotes a very
diverse and inclusive workplace,
so yeah,
I have a really positive
experience within engineering.
So I've been involved in STEM and working
with young people for a really long time,
and it's such a rewarding thing to do.
How I ended up in engineering
was someone suggesting to me,
you know,
I'd never really known about engineering,
so it's really important that we
get out there to give young people
an awareness of what engineering
is because
it's not one of the core subjects.
More recently, I've been involved in Renishaw's
education outreach programme,
which is, you know, is fantastic.
They, these people organise
these events to our local schools
and in things like STEM activities,
school assemblies, and you know, it's
just a really rewarding thing to do.
You go out and you speak to children
and they're really enthusiastic
about science and engineering.
It's great, yeah.
We talked about engineering
being a male dominated industry,
but what we do have is that young
girls are really, you know,
talented at science and engineering,
and somewhere along the lines they lose
that and they stop aspiring to be
in those positions so,
what we want to do is increase
diversity in our engineering, increase,
have more women in our groups, in our teams,
and so the best way to do that,
I think is, is to go in and do
that work at a young age,
encourage women,
give them role models, you know,
change the perception in the face of what
engineering is so that they can
can put themselves in those shoes
and choose that career.
It's a real honour actually.
So the WE50 is something
that is an award that was,
it's been put together in conjunction
with the International Women in
Engineering Day and it's something
to promote work and awareness
of what women's contribution
to engineering and you know,
that's just from the perspective
of looking into it, its fascinating
to see, you know, all these different
things that people get involved with.
So it's really a real honour to be nominated,
to be named as one of those engineers.
So my advice to young girls of
looking into engineering is, you know,
you don't have to make that decision
about what your future career is now.
Engineering is a hugely
broad topic. You know, its a really good
one to go into if you're not sure because
there's so many avenues to go down,
you can go and explore different things,
you might end up in marine biology,
you might end up in healthcare,
you might end up working on
Formula One racing cars,
so it's a really good career to
go for because it gives you
the right skill set that is transferable
across all those industries.