Degree: Systems Design Engineering, BASc 2018
LinkedIn: Adele Chui
What are you doing now and how does your engineering education from Waterloo help with your life today?
In my professional life, I am a product development team lead/medical device product owner. Because my role requires technical knowledge and the ability to interface with mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, desktop and cloud software developers, machine learning engineers, QA testers, and stakeholders, my engineering education from Waterloo in SYDE is very helpful in my day to day. Beyond the obvious user-centered design and focus from SYDE that I use daily when developing solutions to customer issues, the breadth of my engineering background is very helpful when interfacing with all the different types of engineers and technical experts in my role. Beyond that, with my technical know-how, I can prototype design solutions, make tweaks in code, or work with microcontrollers when doing R&D. I really appreciate the soft skills taught by SYDE through our design projects almost every term, as my organizational skills and get stuff done attitude has ended up being really valuable in my professional life.
Why did you decide to be a part of REAC?
I loved the Waterloo Engineering community I was part of during my undergrad and while I have a great group of ride or dies now in my personal life, I do miss the professional network of engineers I had at Waterloo. I am currently based out of Calgary and moving here without that professional network has been quite a roadblock in my professional networking and professional growth. As part of REAC, I can grow my professional network AND improve the recent engineering experience for younger alum.
What is a favourite piece of advice or quote that you would be interested in sharing?
If it's a reversible decision, just make it once you have roughly 60% of the info you think you need - you can always change your mind later but being action oriented means you are doing more with your life! If it's a pretty irreversible decision, I've just been deciding when I have 75% of the info I think I need - is that good? So far it's worked out. The other one come from folks who are two decades older than me - be more confident in yourself! You have made it here with your hard work and dedication and you are capable of doing what you want!
What was your favourite place to eat at in Waterloo?
Nowhere for food - I do miss drinking at Kickoff’s or Chainsaw though.
What are your plans for the near future?
Continue to push my product owner skills, make this year AWESOME for REAC members, and figure out how to make a more meaningful impact on my mentees lives through the Stay in School program through the Downtown Calgary Rotary Club.
Finally, do you have any fun and/or interesting media recommendations? Could be a book, song, movie, documentary, videogame, etc.
TV: All 3 seasons of Hannibal (NBC) are some of the best television ever made - if you love romance between people who don't think they could find love/another person who could understand them PLUS very artistic cannibalism this show is AMAZING.
Music: there is lots of great local music in Calgary - Dead Pixel, the Galacticas, Citysleep, I could go on and on.
Videogame: this year my partner and I spent hours taking turns playing Dave the Diver, which is a rogue-like crossed with a restaurant-sim/resource management game. Super fun!