‘I’d definitely recommend going out of your way to have as many conversations with different people to gain an understanding of what type of career takes your fancy’
Matt Howes, Service and Support Engineer at CMR Surgical, studied BEng Biomedical Engineering at Kent and graduated in 2020. We caught up with Matt about his advice for current students, and his favourite memories of Kent.
How do you feel your time at Kent prepared you for working in the industry?
My time at Kent was incredibly valuable for preparing me with the technical skills and confidence to work effectively in the MedTech industry. Having conversations with lecturers and other experts in the field really helped me get an idea of what to expect in the future and how best to prepare for it.
What did you learn in your degree that has been beneficial to you in your role?
I would say the fact that we became experts in a wide variety of areas has been the most valuable take from my degree. Being exposed to, and knowing a lot about different areas of engineering and bioscience has really helped me stand out in work and has given me a great advantage when communicating across different teams.
Are you working on any exciting projects that you can share?
I have just finished a three month secondment as a Manufacturing Engineer where I was helping to build a system, specialised for use in a certain country (I unfortunately can’t say exactly where yet!). I have recently moved back to the service and support role where I now hope to travel with this system to help set it up in this new region and get it performing surgeries.
What are your plans for the future?
I plan to stay in this role for a while, get the itch for travelling out of my system and then hopefully settle into more of a technical role where I can help train and lead others using the experience I gained from travelling around and dealing with different customers and challenges.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow the same career path?
I’d definitely recommend going out of your way to have as many conversations with different people to gain an understanding of what type of career takes your fancy – whether this be more in research, corporate, start-up etc. This is also a great way to be the first to hear of interesting opportunities – for example, my first job out of university was through a conversation with a professor at Kent who was about to start hiring for his start-up tech company. It’s always good to be open minded and hear different perspectives.
What was your favourite memory from your time at Kent?
It would either have to be when, after weeks of trial and error, my final year project started to work as I wanted it to and all of the hard work paid off. Or, it would be getting into Kent FC and having my initiations. Playing In the team was a huge part of my final year and provided so many memories and stories!