This year, MecanIST was held in a completely virtual format. The 5-day event consisted of 16 lectures, 14 roundtables, 14 workshops, a virtual job fair and a Code Marathon.
Guilherme Videira, coordinator of MecanIST, highlights “Fórum Mecânica tried to make this event as professional and appealing as possible, in order to ensure greater visibility for student community”. The team was aware that the virtual format would bring many changes, “namely the loss of face-to-face interaction, which could have negative effects on students attendance, especially the job fair. So we decided to invite renowned speakers, invest in a super appealing branding and improve the interactive activities, such as RoundTables and Workshops”, says the student.
Ella Podmore (McLAren), Mark Preston (Formula E team DS TECHEETAH), Ricardo Parenti (Lamborghini), Rodrigo Silva ( Alpine F1 Team) and the Técnico alumni Ricardo Figueira (Google), João Filipe Torneiro (Galp), Nuno Filipe (NASA), and Tomás Eiró (Amazon) shared their experiences and career paths.
Ana Rita Pais, Técnico alumna (Aerospace Engineering) and User Experience (UX) Researcher at Facebook/ Oculus, explained her job’s tasks and responsibilities. “Most people who work in this area have different backgrounds. UX design covers a vast array of other areas, so it’s a very diverse group of people with different knowledge sets”, said the Técnico alumna. “The UX Researcher is the voice of the user at different stages of a product life cycle”, she added.
The alumna shared her graduate academic experience at Técnico and at TU Delft (where she carried out a master’s degree), and her motivations to pursue a PhD. Ana Rita Pais also explained how she managed to get a position at NASA’ s Langley Research Center and the lessons learnt from this experience. At the end of her speech, the alumna talked about her job experience at Apple and Facebook.
Working directly with Oculus, one of Facebook’s most successful VR products, the UX researcher says: “When I look back, my career path seems unlikely but, after all the experiences I’ve been through, it makes sense. Gradually, I discovered what I enjoy doing here, how can I learn more and become the best I can be”.
The coordinator of MecanIST stresses “this year we were able to further expand our horizons and we managed to have top speakers, who had already been invited for past editions but didn’t make it largely due to the lack of time to travel to Lisbon”.
“We knew from the beginning that the lectures would be the highlight of this event, and now that they have ended I can confirm it”, says Guilherme Videira. “We managed to prepare a diverse speaker line up that would attract the attention of anyone interested in Engineering or Technology. The lectures were very interesting, captivating and I believe that they had a positive impact on students”, he added.
38 companies attend the job fair and get connected with Técnico talent
The Virtual job Fair took place through Easy Virtual Fair in parallel with Zoom. Some participating companies were OMRON, REN, Cheto, Filstone, The Navigator Company, GMV, and BNP Paribas.
“We had a record number of attendees in workshops”, says Guilherme Videira. “Although the limited number of participants was lower in the roundTables, companies and students were fairly pleased with the result and praised the organisation”, he adds.
The Code Marathon is a programming competition jointly organised with Microsoft, which runs until 23:59 today, the last day of MecanIST, and challenges groups of two students to develop a MATLAB program with high applicability in the engineering world.
According to Guilherme Videira, “this year’s edition of MecanIST was innovative and impactful, and attests our resilience and ability to adapt”.
