As the world confronts new challenges, engineering is evolving to encompass new disciplines combining diverse skill sets, including environmental, systems and biomedical engineering.
At a recent conference, Kala Senathirajah FIEAust CPEng was chatting to an engineer who dismissed her: “You are not an engineer, so you wouldn’t know”.
Senathirajah is Chair of the Engineers Australia College of Environmental Engineering Board and the 2023 Western Australia Professional Engineer of the Year.
“Sadly, … there is a perception by some that environmental engineering is not ‘real engineering’,” she told create. “However, what is real engineering? Isn’t it problem solving through the application of technical knowledge and expertise to meet specific needs?”
Engineering has seen rapid evolution. Traditional disciplines such as mechanical and civil engineering are intersecting with fields such as artificial intelligence, renewable energy and biotechnology, giving rise to a diverse array of innovative career options and new disciplines.
These include environmental, systems and biomedical engineering.
Senathirajah was a member of one of the first cohorts to study environmental engineering at the University of Western Australia around 20 years ago.
She said the creation of the stream stemmed from recognition that while some of the tasks were being undertaken by civil and mechanical engineers, awareness was growing of the demand for sustainable solutions, and with it a need for greater understanding of additional areas such as chemistry, biology, ecology, soil science and water.
“When I was a student, we studied a blend of engineering disciplines with a civil engineering foundation, but our main focus was to address the environmental consequences,” Senathirajah said.
“The mining boom triggered a greater need for environmental engineers, not only because of changes in policies and legislation, but also the increasing awareness of the impacts humans are having on biodiversity and the planet. There was an increasing awareness that we needed a specialised set of skills to try to fix it – [and] quickly.”
Senathirajah believes that as long as there are humans, there will be a demand for environmental engineering skills, even if the titles of the people who carry out the work vary; her professional title has contained “environmental engineer” only once in her 24-year career.
“We are currently facing many multifaceted, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral challenges that demand effective and innovative solutions now, but we are constrained by limited resources and knowledge,” Senathirajah explained.
“Now more than ever, we need to pool together our resources and knowledge – for the collective greater good for humans and the planet – and environmental engineers are uniquely equipped to foster collaborations to ensure holistic and sustainable outcomes.”
Heeding the call is Ryan Rao MIEAust, Senior Environmental Engineer at Oceanis International. Rao works on aquatic and marine developments in the built environment.
“I embrace the title of environmental engineer as it aptly reflects the dynamic and diverse nature of my work, which consistently incorporates innovation, and sustainable design and engineering principles,” Rao told create. “The intricacies of our field defy a singular job description, given the multifaceted tasks we undertake.
“Environmental engineering, being a relatively young technical discipline, offers a broader umbrella that encompasses the wide spectrum of our responsibilities, making it a fitting designation for the various facets of our work.”
Rao, who was Engineers Australia’s 2022 Young Environmental Engineer, said he is a jack-of-all-trades.
“While a portion of my role involves water treatment system design and assessment reporting, most of my day is dedicated to client interactions and collaboration across diverse engineering domains,” he said.
“These interactions vary but typically include exploring improved, more sustainable and efficient approaches to design and problem-solving. Is there a smarter way to do things? Can we make these designs a bit more efficient and sustainable?”
Rao feels that in Australia, environmental engineers tend to be pigeonholed into such categories as water treatment specialists or compliance staff, whereas overseas they are regarded almost as climate scientists and play a crucial role implementing the outcomes of efforts to achieve sustainability.
“Within the next decade, environmental engineers are probably going to be one of the more sought-after professions, largely because of the interdisciplinary diversity they bring to the team,” he said.
Looking at the big picture
Just as environmental engineering leverages knowledge from various streams, systems engineering is another fast-growing discipline that requires a broad approach.
Dr Peter Stepien CPEng, Chair of Engineers Australia’s Information, Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering College, said the discipline is needed more as systems grow more complex.
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary process that ensures the needs of a customer are satisfied throughout the entire life cycle of a system.
It involves integrating such various components as hardware, software, personnel and processes to ensure that the system functions effectively and efficiently to meet the needs of the community.
Systems engineering takes a holistic approach to problem-solving and decision-making, considering an entire system and its interactions with the broader environment.
“An example of a complex system is a spacecraft,” Stepien said. “Systems engineering is used to meet the needs of the customer and achieve a successful outcome.
It involves analysing and understanding the needs and requirements of the spacecraft; designing, integrating and implementing the solution; and evaluating the performance and effectiveness of the spacecraft and identifying improvements.
“The integration of subsystems can be from various areas of engineering, such as electrical, mechanical and aerospace.”
As is the case with other interdisciplinary fields, Stepien said that even engineers who have the role of systems engineer might not have that title.
“While systems engineering hasn’t been perceived as one of the fundamental engineering disciplines, a sound systems engineering approach is growing significantly in its importance, with the increase in systems complexity driven by community needs, emerging technologies and scale of solutions being sought.”
As a result, Stepien envisages a growing need for engineers across all disciplines to understand and apply systems engineering. He notes that systems engineering is used widely in sectors such as defence, aerospace, manufacturing and healthcare, where systems are typically complex.
Deanna Hood is a Senior Robotics Engineer at Vexev who works on the company’s Wave imaging device, which gives vascular surgeons 3D models of a patient’s arteries and shows how they change over time.
Hood, who was Engineers Australia’s 2022 Young Professional Engineer of the Year, said she doesn’t tend to call herself a systems engineer but acknowledges that her work at the interface of software and hardware reflects systems thinking.
“My strengths are in understanding the priorities from the other engineers [and] teammates, and decoupling them so that we can work on them in parallel,” she told create.
“I’ll work on one specifically – at the moment it’s the precision of the ultrasound probe on a robot arm – report back and then integrate my feature or my development with what my teammates have been able to work on.”
Hood said she realised only recently that she had strong abstraction skills, a result of her training in robotic software design.
“You can’t design a robotic system with one piece of software,” she said. “You break it into 100 pieces of software that don’t need to know about each other.
“Putting blinkers on software and different features is not intuitive.”
Hood said she turned to biomedical engineering when she saw it also involved making circuits – but those circuits were heart monitors.
“As it turns out, I’ve been able to help society through a whole range of applications as a pure roboticist,” she said.
A discipline of its own
Like systems engineering, biomedical engineering evolved from several overlapping yet distinct engineering disciplines.
These include chemical engineering, which has such applications as tissue engineering; mechanical engineering, which lends itself to areas such as orthopaedics, implantables and disability aids; and electrical engineering, which includes electromedical equipment.
“While there are still a lot of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineers out there who do choose to later specialise in biomedical engineering, it is a discipline in its own right and has been globally for a while now,” said Kelly Coverdale CPEng, Chair of Engineers Australia’s Biomedical College.
“What we tend to see … is that 100 per cent of our biomedical engineering cohort are in non-engineering centric industries. As such, the value of their role within an organisation is not always understood at the upper management level.
“Even in manufacturing of medical devices there are companies who aren’t employing biomedical engineers over other disciplines of engineering because they don’t appreciate the necessary and unique skill set.”
In Australia, Coverdale added, biomedical engineering has suffered a bit of an identity crisis.
“We haven’t necessarily had the industry to support employment of graduates like in other engineering disciplines,” she said. “In healthcare and disability, for example, there are only limited places for graduates around the country.”
This, coupled with the tendency for governments to fund pharmaceuticals or biotech over medtech, has led to a shortage of experienced biomedical engineers contributing to industry growth and mentoring emerging practitioners.
Coverdale is keen to promote the breadth of knowledge and experience biomedical engineers have, which can be applied in many different ways.
“Whether it’s in healthcare, medicine, manufacturing or even beyond that, the skill set that a lot of biomedical engineers have is transferable into other disciplines,” she said.
Cait Thomas, Quality Assurance Engineer at 4DMedical, believes biomedical engineering is a “beautiful cross-section of health care and technical innovation”, and that health care and engineering are a good fit because each requires professional problem-solvers.
“For me, it was this awesome cross-section that satiated both parts of me that deeply wanted to have a tangible impact on people, but also to have this technical challenge and problem-solving … approach,” she said.
While Thomas is part of 4DMedical’s quality team, she supports the hardware product engineering team, and her job is to ensure compliance.
“I work very closely with the engineers across mechanical and electrical product development, embedded software, production, and installation and servicing from right through the product life cycle,” she said.
“My focus is to look at how we can develop and deliver a safe and effective product, quickly and correctly. That’s all while aligning with our processes [and] user needs, and in adherence with domestic and international regulations and standards.”
Thomas is surprised by the number of engineers who aren’t aware of biomedical engineering, but people are very interested in what she does when they understand it, as most engineers are drawn to providing value to the broader community.
“So I do feel appreciated, and I like to be able to give my fellow engineers that appreciation for their contribution to society,” she said. “I try to convince my friends in the mechanical and electrical fields to apply for jobs [working with] medical devices.”
The best of the best
Hood believes one of the challenges of the engineering profession is that it can be hard to inspire newcomers when a career path is not clear.
“There’s a lot of draw to the newer versions of engineering,” she said.
“I think biomedical was the first cab off the rank in terms of these application-specific engineering degrees, and I think they are more alluring because you can understand at least what industry you’re going to apply your skills to.“
Nevertheless, while demand for single-focus engineers remains strong, there are rewards for those with the ability to blend skills from various disciplines and be open to non-traditional fields.
Senathirajah’s view of environmental engineering could apply to any of these relatively new streams.
“The beautiful thing is that it’s a blend of a lot of different types of engineering,’ she said. “It’s the best of the best.”