Patrick Morton: Innovating with Engineering and Medicine

What are you studying at the moment and what made you choose that? 

I'm currently studying Engineering and Finance with a direct pathway to medicine  

I've wanted to be a doctor since I was a little kid so that is why I applied for the direct pathway to postgraduate medicine.  I also wanted to do something in my undergraduate that would give me a good plan B, so I thought of engineering because I like Maths and Science. I thought if I paired that with Finance it would give me a solid entry into the corporate side of engineering work if I decided to go down that path.  

I'm currently doing mechanical engineering. I enjoy manual arts and I've been a blacksmith for about 7 or 8 years now. I guess that led me towards mechanical engineering more than anything else. I've also just gotten approval to do the Bachelor of Engineering and Masters of Engineering in four years. In terms of medicine pathways, I'm interested in cardiothoracic at the moment but I'm keeping an open mind. I'm pretty keen on surgery but not too sure yet. 

I didn't want to do the traditional medicine pathway, where you do it in undergrad, pick your specialisation and that is all you do for the rest of your life. I thought it would be cool if I could take some knowledge, and innovate with it and do something exciting. It was also good to keep my options open with a solid plan B.  I thought sometime in the future that I could take the engineering background and pair it with insights from being a doctor to possibly build prosthetics or something similar.   

I am also a recipient of the Fogarty scholarship at UWA and the matching residential scholarship at St Catherine's.  

What is your current role at UWA? 

I am working with the System Health Lab at UWA. We do a whole lot of things working with different sensors. The project I am running at the moment is called RAMI (Remote Asset Management Indicator). These are sensors designed to sit on a low-value asset and tell you whether it moves or not. For instance, this has good applications with power poles because currently, power companies rely on people to ring in and report fallen poles. But if they have these, they will know straight away if there is an issue and can go and fix them. It's basically using internet of things technology to make much cheaper solutions to problems. An equivalent sensor might cost $3000 each, but we can make this one for $60. Other applications could be remote mining equipment out on-site, local government assets like skip bins and such. This way you can track where they are meant to be and whether they are moving basically.   

Another thing I'm involved with at the lab is accelerated life testing. Companies come to us when they have a product that they need to test, like how long will it last under these conditions? Where it normally might take 5 years to fail, we speed that process up and do it in a couple of days for example. So, we come up with ways of testing equipment and making it fail, so we can then offer different specifications it can meet.   

How did you get involved with this?  

I spoke to one of my lecturers because I was looking for a work placement over the winter break. I asked him to recommend some people to me, and one of those was Melinda. So, I went in and I saw her and I thought I was interviewing her to be my supervisor for the placement, but she ended up interviewing me for a job there. I didn't know there was a job going, I was expecting to do my placement and that was that.   

She looked at my CV and asked me a bunch of questions and then asked would you mind coming to work for us.   

How have you found your time at college so far? 

This is my second year of college and I've really enjoyed it. I've made a lot more friends than I would have otherwise. It's so easy to spend an hour or more in the dining hall just chatting, so I've made lots of friends so that's probably the best part. There is also a lot of support available here to help you achieve your academic and other goals. With my packed timetable, the dining hall and sport are my only two real opportunities to socialize much during the week. College is an awesome opportunity to get involved in a lot of different things. It's all about having good balance, and good discipline, particularly if you're studying something quite rigorous.   

College was a big change, and I think O'Week has been my favourite event so far. I went to high school at Lumen Christi College and I lived 10 minutes away from there, so coming to College was a big change, but a wonderful experience. 

What advice would you have for any students looking to gain experience in their field during their studies? 

My advice for any student's looking to gain experience in their fields is just going to talk to people. It doesn't always have to be in those regimented, Networking events. I think it can sometimes be better to just have one on one conversations with people. Asking around helps, just like I talked to my lecturer, you can talk about your interests and just by asking the question I met with some people and through that I found a job. It might not always be that easy but it can never hurt to try, and you'll probably meet some interesting people.