Well thank you very much Amany for
joining me today to talk about your
fantastic achievements here in
engineering at UCL as part of the INWED
2020 celebrations now well maybe we
could just start by if you could just
tell us a little bit about your area of
study.
I'm currently a member
in the information and communication
engineering research group at UCL I'm
doing a PhD degree in electronic and
electrical engineering that is focused
om the development of optimised
electronic circuits, to increase
the transmission speeds in visible light
communication I mean my PhD covers the
whole engineering process starting from
the design comparative studies
optimization experimental work site so
who or what inspired you to want to
study engineering I'd say that as a kid
I was always very curious to know how
things worked I also like math so
engineering seemed like a natural choice
for me but also having grown up in Egypt
I always had this desire to make a
difference in my surrounding even even
if little just by setting young girls
that they can pursue their passion study
engineering or whatever is it that they
like actually maybe in a region where
women are not generally encouraged to be
engineers and they're largely
underrepresented in STEM areas and
what's your favorite part of your study
as the researcher my favorite part is
getting to build my own designs
I mean that's the most exciting and
rewarding part is to see something that
worked on so hard just functioning the
way I'm expecting
to function and I really like more like
practical hands-on experimental work
rather than theories just feel like I
learn more from it and it's more fun and
what's the most valuable lesson you've
learnt in your studies so far in your
research
I'm definitely I'd say probably first
appearance just learning to deal with
the frustration sometimes building
circuits that does not work as expected
or just trying to understand the concept
that is new it's difficult it's the
hardest part of it I mean just finding
the confidence and the I say this
excitement to keep on going and just
persist to get things right and to
understand them and just accomplish what
I mean I want to accomplish can you
describe a typical day in the life of
your your research obviously before all
that the change in circumstances I mean
my day has varied throughout my PhD at
the beginning of my PhD I tended to read
more papers get familiar with the
literature which required me like to
spend more time at my desk in the
research office but more recently
towards the end of my PhD I mush my
focus shifted to more practical work so
I spend more time in the lab there is
other activities that I do
just working I mean there is socials, we
usually used to have you know group
lunches which was very nice and
hopefully yeah so it sounds quite varied
which is nice and how would you say the
current situation with Covid-19 has
affected your work? the interruption of
my experiment work in the lab specially
the
novice coats and some of this work I
feel is you know it's very important to
the completion of my PhD I now I right
now I'm trying to use the time as part
of my thesis and my final thesis so
that I'm not I'm not wasting time and
this is something that I can do remotely
also not having any kind of physical
face-to-face interaction with a
supervisor or other group members
sometimes can you know give some sense
of isolation now we try to zoom all the
time and stay in touch future which is
great with something to compensate for
the distance yeah for sure yeah
and finally what advice would you give a
younger person or even your younger self
who wants to enter the field of stem
it's probably less of an advice and more
of realization is something that I
realized when I started studying
engineering it's that it's not as
intimidating as it looks
or as other people make it to look and
probably just because you know other
people or maybe perhaps friends perceive
it as a hard subject doesn't mean that I
should have opted out or should have to
study engineering subjects training like
are in challenging but I feel it's given
this efficient time and effort it can be
very rewarding yeah that's great that's
really good today thank you thank you
thank you thank you so much thank you
