(downbeat music plays)
- [Interviewer] Uh, hi.
- Hey
- [Interviewer] what is this place?
- This is UTS startups
- [Interviewer] So what is that?
- It's a place where
students can turn their ideas
and projects into businesses.
- [Interviewer] Right, so
you're a student in UTS then?
- I was a student,
I graduated last year.
- [Interviewer] What did you study?
- I studied civil engineering
and during that time,
I started a business
so I joined UTS startups.
- [Interviewer] Interesting,
so give us a bit of a tour.
- Yes, so here is the events space,
you can come in here,
either to host events or workshops
the things that you know,
or you can come here to learn,
or the university itself
runs industry events
so you can learn about what's going on.
- [Interviewer] So what's an example of
an event they might run?
- Tonight, there's one called
"Scaling your Business",
that includes three startup
founders from UTS startups
as well as some industry experts.
- [Interviewer] Cool,
okay, so where do you work?
- I work nextdoor,
let's go check that out.
So in this room here,
you've got Podcast studio.
- [Interviewer] So this kind of facility,
anyone can sign up and it's free?
- Yes, so if you're a UTS student, alumni
or someone in the team
is a student or alumni,
they can work from this space.
- [Interviewer] So tell me
a bit about your journey,
how did you go from an idea to a product?
- So they're mainly two other
engineering students working
off our laptop and we just
found those very frustrating
not to have the additional screens
that we usually have for our work,
so we decided to try
and build one ourselves.
- [Interviewer] Okay, and so what does
the product look like?
can you show us?
- It's an ultra-thin portable monitor,
like one of these,
but additional, that you can plug in
to your laptop, your phone
or tablet, any device.
So you can see here,
that's side's the laptop,
and then that portable monitor up.
- [Interviewer] Really
cool, okay so I want us
to take back a bit and
ask you about your degree.
So you studied a Bachelor of Engineering,
can you talk to me about that
and how that kind of facilitated
your starting in business?
- Yes, I studied civil engineering,
the building is actually nextdoor.
Do you wanna go check it out?
- [Interviewer] Okay, with engineering,
how does the course work?
How long is it?
- An engineering course is
usually a four year degree,
at UTS it's five.
Because in your second and fourth year
you take a semester off
and you work full-time in an industry.
- [Interviewer] Interesting,
so what did you do?
- So I studied civil engineering,
so I worked for a company
called BWIC construction.
- [Interviewer] And what did
you do in your internship?
- Sorry, I was on two sites,
my first internship,
I was on a site called North
Stratford rail and bus,
which was a tunnel and a live rail.
And for my second internship,
I worked on North
Connect which is a tunnel
that connects the M1 and M2.
- [Interviewer] Did you enjoy it?
- I learned so much,
I enjoyed it, learned from
a whole range of people.
And I really came back into the classroom
where I could really understand
the relevance of what I was learning.
- [Interviewer] So, when you
start an engineering degree,
do you need to know whether you gonna do,
you know chemical or
civil or biomechanical?
Well, you have two options.
You can either do a
general engineering degree
where it allows you to
explore multiple majors
all at the same time,
or you can also, even
if you do choose a path
you can work in that industry
in your second year,
which gives you a lot
of time to change course
and choose different sub-majors
in order to make the degree that you want.
Let's go upstairs to the robotics lab.
The robotics lab is primarily for
mechanical students, mechatronics students
and electrical engineering students.
- [Interviewer] Right,
and what do they be doing?
- They could be creating
a little circuit board,
making a self-driving car,
or a vehicle that powers into the wind,
all range of different types of projects.
- [Interviewer] So why did
you pick engineering at UTS?
- So you know,
I like to solve problems
and I really liked maths
and science in high school,
so I knew I liked engineering.
I chose civil because
I really liked the built environment
that how the world exists around us.
And the reason I chose UTS,
is because I knew after
one year of studying,
I could go work full-time in industry
and really figure out if I liked the work
and the job itself.
And in hindsight,
it was one of the best
things I could have done.
- [Interviewer] Well I
feel like we've taken
a lot of your time
we'll show ourselves out.
- Sure, see ya.
(downbeat music plays)
