Building A Career
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday September 6, 2008
"Ever since I was young, I loved to build things. I decided to follow this career path pretty much after high school," Olivia Mirza, 35, says. This love has continued after Olivia started her PhD at the University of Western Sydney in 2006.
Her PhD research project - looking at how steel-fibre reinforcing for structural engineers can reduce construction costs - is part of an Australian Research Council and Bluescope Lysaght linkage."This research consists of numerical study to compare with existing experimental study. Besides reading a lot of background information in the form of journal articles, I am also working on the numerical analysis," she says. "I also had the opportunity to present and publish one part of our research findings at the third International Conference on Steel and Composite Structures in Manchester, UK, in July 2007."Mirza says that the biggest challenge in undertaking the research was "trying to find the gap in another researcher's work" and come up with an original idea of her own.With a diploma and advanced diploma in civil engineering in Malaysia already under her belt, her scholarship from the University of NSW to do a bachelor in civil and environmental engineering, fuelled her drive to continue study."By doing a PhD, I have created another opportunity for myself," she says, of the possibility of a career in academia. "The analysis skills that I have learnt from the PhD allow me to become an analyst engineer instead of just a design engineer."
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald