Describe a typical day at your jobOn a typical day I have quite some variations. As the YGT for Gravity-Related Experiments for University Students, I follow up on the teams from the Your Thesis! programme. These are Spin, Drop, Fly and Orbit Your Thesis! It ranges from reading proposals, organizing meetings, going over documentation, verifying the feasibility of experiments, to ensuring milestones and deadlines are kept. In short, I interact with students and platform experts to provide the students with an as close as possible approach to the professional versions of these experiments.
The campaigns, during a campaign the students execute their experiment after a year worth of preparations. This is the moment where all comes together. It’s also a nice break from the ‘regular’ office days. The coolest of them is probably the Fly Your Thesis! campaign. During this campaign parabolic flights are performed with Novespace’s A310 resulting in about 22 seconds of weightlessness per parabola.
Not really, I really enjoy my job. When studying I always had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do. My interests are very broad, which led me to engineering. The experiments students come up with can vary a lot from each other. We see experiments from all fields of expertise, Life sciences, fundamental science, engineering,…
Before applying to be a YGT, I participated within the Orbit Your Thesis! programme myself. During my master’s I was part of the OSCAR-QUBE team and together we put a payload on the International Space Station (ISS). With this I found the courage to pursue a career in the space industry and applied for a YGT position at ESA ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
What do you expect to be the biggest challenges/changes someone in your role will face in the coming 10 years and do you have any advice on how to tackle them?
I think the biggest challenge for the coming years will be the booming interest in the space industry not only for countries and companies, but also universities, schools and students who want to participate. Especially these hands-on projects will see a lot of renewed interest as the growing industry is looking for new people to hire with a good background and knowhow. We are already working on ways to include as many people as we can in the educational aspect of ESA.
In high school I followed sciences-maths with 6 hours of maths. My first two years at university I did Physics, but I switched to Electronics-ICT which I followed up with a master’s degree in industrial engineering technology with a focus on Electronics-ICT. I always wanted to know a lot about everything. So, I tried to follow an educational path that would teach me skills from more than just one specific field. Having a broad knowledge makes it easy to connect with all kinds of projects that students come up with.
Communication skills are important in any job, but especially in an international organisation like ESA. On a daily basis I interact with people from all over the world. In addition, being able to work in teams of people is also needed. And to ensure you can make everything run as planned it is always good to have some project management experience.
During my education I participated in several projects where teamwork was very important. But also, in multicultural and interdisciplinary projects outside of my home country. I went to Ireland, Ethiopia and to China. This allowed me to learn about cultures and also on how to approach issues or problems in a diplomatic manner.
I am still early on in my career, but the most rewarding event was going on a parabolic flight during the Fly Your Thesis! campaign of October 2021. I got to join on 2 of the 3 flights, meaning I got to be weightless for 62 times and each time was about 22 seconds. It is an experience to never forget.
What is your dream job?
That is a really difficult question. I am still orientating a bit. But I do want to stay in the educational team of ESA, if possible. I thought about doing an educational master after my master’s in engineering, so I am currently doing something I was dreaming about already. It is amazing to combine education and space into one and the same career.
I always thought it would be impossible to pursue a job in the space industry but yet I am here. As long as you love what you do and enjoy putting in the work you can become everything you want to be. For sure, it is not always easy, but that is part of what makes you the person you need to be.
