I worked at DEKRA Test­ing & Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion GmbH in Bochum as an expert in the field of elec­tri­cal explo­sion pro­tec­tion for 6 years. There I spe­cialised in the intrin­sic safe­ty type of pro­tec­tion, although I also worked on oth­er projects. In addi­tion to test­ing elec­tri­cal equip­ment, my tasks also includ­ed plan­ning and organ­is­ing sem­i­nars and work­ing as an audi­tor.

I sup­port­ed the com­pa­ny Auto-Intern GmbH for a year on a part-time basis in the devel­op­ment of cir­cuits and print­ed cir­cuit boards. In addi­tion to the auto­mo­tive sec­tor, the com­pa­ny is also active in the field of automa­tion.

I worked in the devel­op­ment depart­ment at the EMS ser­vice provider ETR-PS GmbH in Dort­mund and, among oth­er things, devel­oped test setups for test­ing assem­bled cir­cuit boards. In addi­tion to this work, I also man­aged, devel­oped and com­plet­ed oth­er projects. I par­tic­u­lar­ly remem­ber the switch cur­rent sen­sor for the DB net­works, which is used for the pre­dic­tive main­te­nance of switch­es.

Black­Ber­ry, or offi­cial­ly Research in Motion (RIM) at the time, was one of the largest mobile phone man­u­fac­tur­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the devices with their own oper­at­ing sys­tem were unable to assert them­selves against Apple and Android. One thing I can def­i­nite­ly say: it was­n’t the hard­ware! Dur­ing my time at uni­ver­si­ty, I spent a lot of time in the lab with an oscil­lo­scope and oth­er mea­sur­ing devices, mea­sur­ing sig­nals for the engi­neers. Lat­er, I was also allowed to test the recep­tion and trans­mis­sion per­for­mance of the devices in one of the most mod­ern LTE anten­na cham­bers (affec­tion­ate­ly known as the ‘Star­gate’).

I suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed my Mas­ter’s degree in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy at the Georg Agri­co­la Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences THGA in Bochum. I com­plet­ed the Mas­ter’s pro­gramme while work­ing.

I suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed my Bach­e­lor’s degree in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy at the Georg Agri­co­la Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences THGA in Bochum. I com­plet­ed the bach­e­lor’s pro­gramme full-time.

I was able to com­plete an appren­tice­ship as an elec­tron­ics tech­ni­cian for devices and sys­tems at Raith GmbH in Dort­mund. Among oth­er things, the com­pa­ny devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures elec­tron­ics in the field of nano­lith­o­g­ra­phy. I learnt the basics of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing there and was even able to assist in the devel­op­ment depart­ment with cir­cuit and cir­cuit board devel­op­ment.