• Question: What is your greatest achievement?

    Asked by daviesl3 to Emily on 19 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      I think most engineers will find it hard to say that what they do is amazing. We just know we’re doing our job, and think that it’s normal 🙂
      I was working on a project last year where I needed to put in a new piece of equipment to remove metal from the drug process. Sometimes we use metals to help the reaction work (as “catalysts”), but we need to remove them after as they are toxic. This piece of equipment was completely new, noone had used one before. I had to put it in the plant (work out which pipes and instruments were needed), and write the procedure for how it should be used. We had all sorts of problems!! A lot of hard work later, I managed to solve the problems so that we could remove the metal. If I hadn’t been able to do that, we wouldn’t have had the drug available for the trials, and as it’s a cancer drug that could have meant people died!
      It doesn’t sound very glorious when I read this, but at the time it was a massive challenge!

Comments

  • Photo: Joanne

    Joanne commented on :

    Great answer to a good question Emily.

    My greatest achievement was becoming an engineer as a mother of three children and the day I graduated I we were all homeless! 🙂

    You can do anything if you put your mind to it!

  • Photo: Paige

    Paige commented on :

    Davies… my greatest achievement has been seeing people positively affected by my science stories… and participating in this event with you students!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    🙂