Denise Wai
Denise was a summer scholar with the Robinson team in 2007 during her Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) study at Massey University.
Now Denise works as an automation engineer at EHL Group in New Plymouth.
“I’m involved in the electrical and control system design and implementation for various hydraulic and pneumatic automation projects. These include wave energy devices, a grid energy storage device, an automatic cable slicer and gangways for navy ships and super yachts.”
She previously worked as a graduate engineer at Contact Energy where she was involved in maintenance and modifications to electrical and control systems for the company’s geothermal power stations.
“As a summer student I worked on the control system for the winding heads of the Roebel cable winding machine. In the following academic year (for my honours project), I was given the opportunity to design and build a proof of concept for the winding heads that were interchangeable and allowed for greater flexibility in the machine.”
Denise says working with the Robinson team gave her the confidence to challenge herself with complex projects.
“It gave me that ‘I can do it’ attitude! Also, it set me up well for working on multi-disciplinary engineering projects because I’d had experience working with different engineers and skilled tradesmen.“Working at Robinson was a great technical learning environment with an awesome work and social culture too.”