Somayeh's Story

My name is Somayeh Hussaini. I worked as an intern in the Software UI/UX teams at Deswik from 2017 through to early 2021. I graduated from a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) majoring in Mechatronics from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2020.

A bit about me…

My parents are from Afghanistan and I was born in Iran. As we were displaced people when living in Iran, my family decided to go to Malaysia to register with the United Nations and become refugees. I learned English at a community centre for refugees in Malaysia and began teaching other students after a year. My family and I were accepted by Australia through the United Nations in 2013. I started school for the first time beginning from grade 10 when I arrived here in Brisbane. At the time, I could not even imagine the possibility of studying at university. After my maths teachers encouraged me to go to an engineering camp for high school students, I became very interested in mechatronics engineering. This led me to apply for a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics Engineering) at QUT. I was offered a place in the course and commenced my studies there in 2016.

How I came to work at Deswik…

In my second year of university in 2017, I became a QUT Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) ambassador. As an ambassador, I led and supported STEM workshops for high school students and introduced them to STEM pathways. I came across the Austmine Women in STEM: METS Careers Pathway program through QUT, which aims to encourage women to pursue careers in the METS industry. Through the program, I was introduced to a number of companies in this industry and was ultimately offered an internship opportunity at Deswik.

After I completed my 10-week internship program at Deswik, I was very lucky to receive an offer to work on a casual basis while studying at university. In this role, I worked on a range of coding tasks related to UI/UX, debugged large codebases to find the sources of issues, collaborated with other team members to implement new features, documented added functionality and enhancements, maintained and increased unit test coverage to ensure added features and enhancements are integrated properly, and demonstrated new features to other members of the team to receive feedback. I am very thankful to Deswik for giving me real-world experience at such an early point in my studies.

My experience at Deswik…

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience at Deswik. My favourite part of my time at Deswik has been experiencing and observing everyone’s positive work attitudes and the strong bonds within the teams. I have always found everyone very approachable and willing to help, allowing me to feel very at home at Deswik. Sharing my ideas with others and learning from their feedback and mentorship has helped me improve my technical and professional skills to become a more efficient and effective worker.

I am pleased to have been involved in the development of the Deswik.Sched, Deswik.GO, and Deswik.Blend applications. It was particularly exciting to work on the Deswik.GO application all the way through from the early days of the development process through to its commercial release.

I have always felt supported at Deswik as a student balancing my studies and my work. My supervisors have been very accommodating with my working hours and helping me plan my semester to ensure I had enough time to study. Deswik also provided me with incredible learning opportunities with internal training and workshops on a range of topics, which has greatly expanded my knowledge of the METS industry, the capability of Deswik products and their potential in the future. Overall Deswik provided me with the opportunity to experience software engineering at a professional level, which helped me realise that I want to focus on the software engineering component of my mechatronics degree long-term.

Where to from here?

I am now moving on to undertake a PhD program at QUT, focusing on bio-inspired neural networks for visual place recognition.

I would absolutely recommend Deswik’s internship program. Deswik is a great place to work and learn throughout your studies in an incredibly friendly and supportive environment.

I will miss the Deswik family and all our social events, including the morning teas on Fridays and the monthly software breakfasts.

Thanks for everything!