Graduate Profile

Engineers have the ability to deliver genuine changes in the quality of people’s lives at many different levels. They don’t just design systems but understand what makes a good system work and a bad one fail.

Environmental Engineering PhD student Rebecca Barnes is in the front line of sustainable engineering – working in isolated rural villages in the Philippines to assess the most effective ways to deliver clean water and sanitation systems to remote communities. "Water and sanitation systems for small communities in developing countries often fail early on and many cases can be attributed to the initial planning processes used and the communication with the community in question," Rebecca says. "We have all the technology now to deliver these services – we need to improve our planning processes."

Rebecca, originally from Tamworth in NSW, majored in Water and Wastewater Treatment in the fourth year of her Bachelor of Engineering in Environmental Engineering before embarking on her PhD. "My research looks at the interface between engineering and sociology. It’s very useful to me as an engineer to learn about that because this is the type of work I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life," she says.