Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Celia Butler, Senior Applications Engineer at Synopsys Inc.

 

Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses

 

Podcast transcript

 

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Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College
 
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.
 
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I'm Kelly Preevce And today, I'll be talking to Dr Celia Butler, who is currently senior applications engineer at Synopsis,
 
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having graduated with her PhD in physics in 2012. Celia, you happy to introduce yourself?
 
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Hello, my name's Celia Butler and I did my PhD in Microwave Metamaterials in the electro magnetic materials group at the University of Exeter
 
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which is part of the physics department or it was at the time. And now I work for synopsis
 
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I'm a senior applications engineer with the simplewear support team.
 
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And what I do is I provide support for a software package that allows you to take 3D image data and like scans from MRI,
 
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and CT and turn it into a computer model and you can do all sorts of things with that computer model from 3D printing to finite
 
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element analysis all the way through to just simple visualisations to learn something about that data that you're inspecting.
 
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Amazing. So can you tell me a little bit about the transition from doing your research degree into the current role?
 
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Did you have any were there any jobs that you took in between or was it a straight move?
 
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Yes. So when I left my PhD, I actually went into a job which sort of spanned the gap between academia and industry.
 
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So officially, it was a postdoc role, but I was actually more of a research and development engineer with a pre-spin out company.
 
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So it was still part of the university and it took on a role.
 
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kind of like a technical consultancy?
 
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So like an R&D consultancy role. And my specific area was to look at improving radio frequency identification tagging.
 
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So RFID tagging is now quite popular, popular. You see it all over the place in tags, in clothes shops.
 
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RFID tags are embedded into shoes. When you buy them all sorts of things.
 
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But the specific area that I was looking at was how to tag structures that have a lot of
 
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metal in them because essentially they're an antenna and when you place them on metal,
 
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they don't work very well. And I was looking at tagging RFID circuit boards.
 
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So these circuit boards have very high value and you really try to understand what you can do.
 
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So I worked with a few different people locally to try and address this problem,
 
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using some of the knowledge from my PhD, but also past experience from before that as well.
 
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And after that role, I left it and started a new position for a company called Subten Systems.
 
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Now, this was a very small Start-Up company, possibly the best and most exciting research I have ever done.
 
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It was looking to create wireless Ethernet bridges.
 
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What that means is point to point, a transmission of data, at very, very high frequencies.
 
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So in the millimetre wave region. And this was so exciting because I was quite new to the R&D world and I was given a lot of responsibility,
 
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but also worked in an amazing team and we just got things done.
 
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It was fantastic. But unfortunately, like a lot of start-ups, it didn't make it.
 
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And I had to make the decision to leave. Possibly the hardest decision of my life.
 
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But yes. So I left subten systems and that fantastic team.
 
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And then I found a job in the centre of Exeter working for at the time, simplewear
 
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which were, again, a small company, not really a Start-Up, but about 30, 40 people.
 
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And from there. This company was bought out by synopsis.
 
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But my job role has stayed pretty consistent. Most of the way through.
 
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And I actually I'm able to use a lot of my experience from my career, but also interests outside of work to perform my job, which is it's just a.
 
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Varied and keeps me on my toes most of the time.
 
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That sounds amazing. And in a short space of time, you've worked in quite a lot of different.
 
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Different organisations. So what was it like making that transition from your phd into a.
 
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Non-academic Role did. Did you always know you wanted a job outside of academia and doing research in industry or so?
 
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I think when I did my PhD, I really enjoyed my time doing the research element before I did my PhD.
 
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I worked in industry for a few years.
 
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So I was very aware of what it was like to work in a team doing commercial R&D as opposed to quite academic research.
 
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And it is very different. And I preferred the industrial research, the kind of work.
 
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Working towards one product or one specific goal,
 
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but also having the flexibility to change projects or move into different roles within the same organisation.
 
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Whereas in a PhD, you're very focussed on your path, your route to completing whatever your project might be.
 
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I didn't find the transition very hard.
 
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Moving from academic research to sort of industrial R&D, I think, because it's something that I knew and I was comfortable with.
 
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I was looking forward to moving back. I also had very good kind of time management skills during the PhD.
 
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I viewed it more as a day to day job because of my past experience.
 
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There is one exception for that, which was when I was writing up.
 
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When I wrote up, the time really went out the window. I was just working all the time, it seemed.
 
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But after that, I was really able to relax into that role,
 
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to work with lots and lots of different people and to really focus on a product, which is what we were aiming for.
 
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So, yeah, that worked really well for me. So, yeah.
 
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Can you say a little bit more about what it what it is about doing R&D work in industry that you prefer to academia.
 
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Is it that kind of. Is it something to do with the pace. Is it the pace of it or is it the kind of clearer sense of product, and impact.
 
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So I think industrial R&D has a clear focus, a clear aim.
 
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But people work slightly differently. In my experience in commercial R&D compared to academic R&D or academic research, in academic research,
 
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you are striving to understand every single little part of whatever your problem or area might be in commercial R&D,
 
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although you need to understand what's going on. There's a limit to how much detail you need to go into.
 
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You need to be able to solve the problem. But you are working towards a different goal and that goal will come to an end and it will change.
 
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There will be a second level, another stage or something that you are building on.
 
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You need to understand this area. Make a decision. Produce a product, whatever that might be, and then you move on.
 
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It's also quite normal to have multiple projects going on at the same time.
 
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And for me, I need that that ability to be able to switch between projects to keep me fully invested and sort of just enjoying what I do.
 
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I need lots of little things to dip in and out of just to keep me entertained.
 
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I guess. Yes, I absolutely know that feeling.
 
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So you said about the time management skills that you developed during your PhD and how important they are to what you do now.
 
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And certainly if you're workin