Awards and job offers for Middlesex engineering students shortlisted in Siemens competition

The Siemens Transform event in Manchester included networking with executives and engineers which opens doors for new graduates

Six final year Middlesex Mechatronics & Robotics and Design Engineering students exhibited their projects to thousands of visitors at Siemens’s flagship Transform innovation showcase in Manchester this summer.

The students, who were among just 28 finalists in the company’s annual Connected Curriculum competition, demonstrated poster displays of their work and had an “inspiring and eye-opening experience” exploring frontier technologies, listening to speakers and networking, positioning themselves for job openings.

Arash Bazrafshan achieved the highest score in the Siemens PLC and HMI challenges, which was a test of skills in industrial process control programming. He won a complimentary Siemens training course worth £3000.

Mihir Ragoonauth finished third in the Connected Curriculum contest for his entry: a digital twin (live, virtual replica) of an aircraft thrust reverser breaking/decelerating system, with a fault-detecting AI element. Mihir rebuilt his submission several times following feedback from judges.

Describing Connected Curriculum as “demanding in the best way,” Mihir notes how the judges’ focus was on the framing of the problem, not the technology itself.

“The questions were almost entirely about why this matters to someone maintaining an engine,” he added.

Other students entered their final year coursework projects. Mechatronics & Robotics graduate Akashan Aravindan’s model of a production line for making phone cases using Festo cyberfactory equipment met the set productivity challenges and kept within the simulated budget.

Akashan designed the system with one programming platform and constructed a digital twin with another. “The entire thing is simplified as a training exercise, but it’s as close as it comes to real life,” he says.

“It was nice, it was my first time presenting a project I had done at such a massive event. I was kind of nervous, but I knew what my project was about.”

The students relished the opportunity to connect and have face-to-face time with representatives from firms they would aspire to work for, from Siemens UK & Ireland CEO Brian Holliday, through to Northern Irish industrial automation specialists NeoDyne, and the Red Bull Formula One team. 

Lucy Nicholls from Jaguar Land Rover gave Mehmet Samil Ayoz and coursemate Kenia Cortes Valenzuela valuable early-career advice about working in the automotive industry and talked about her own engineering specialism.

Mihir says he spoke to Siemens’ Brian Holliday who gave him “an honest steer on how to build a career, and he followed up afterwards”. Arash Bazrafshan said he had learned “a great deal what employers are looking for in graduate engineers”.

Some of the students have been approached by companies about potential jobs.

Professor Mehmet Karamanoglu, head of the Department of Design Engineering & Mathematics said the students were “only getting opportunities because they’ve been to Transform, and in my point of view they’ve increased their chances of getting a job”. All shortlisted participants in the Connected Curriculum competition get guaranteed practice and real interviews with Siemens, which took place in August.

Middlesex equips its labs with Siemens equipment and Middlesex students’ familiarity with it gives them an edge. Companies that have previously recruited Middlesex engineering graduates, include  FirstCo which designs and operates monitoring and communication systems. FirstCo Director Andy Morgan said that he “would welcome the chance to build a deeper partnership between our organisations, based on the excellent graduates we have had join us from your course in the past couple of years.”

Mihir says what stands out for him about Middlesex is how “hands-on the programme is… I spent a lot of time on real hardware, pneumatic stations and robotics. That meant the industrial tools were already familiar when I came to use them properly.”

Akashan, who transferred direct into the second year from his general engineering course at an Australian university in Sri Lanka, says the level of focus on practical skills and approaches was a culture shock. He recalls struggling, then persevering on his first day when he was handed an Arduino microcontroller and asked to code it, having never seen one before.

“Learning in a practical sense is much better than learning the theory behind it,” he says. “You make the mistake and then you understand how the mistake was made.”

Akashan added: “Coming to Middlesex, you should be prepared for the physical knowledge and hands-on experience you’re going to get.

“Applying for Connected Curriculum is so beneficial – it’s definitely a positive for anyone who enters it.”