S1E03 - Victor Awad a Consultant Engineer for the Food and Beverage Industry

I've made a good impression so far. I did well on my phone interview, and I want to move to the next round quickly. So I actually scheduled an interview for the next day, even though they were in Karlsbad, and I was in Palm Desert, so I was two hours away. And so I scheduled it for the next day for the following morning. I packed up my car, drove out, and I did the interview as soon as I could, because that was the first opportunity that I could grab both of the hiring managers in that office. Welcome to the Chemical Engineering Guys podcast. We show in which we share stories and tips from chemical and processed engineers. We talk about student and professional life, as well as important aspects of products, processes, industries, and companies. But more importantly, what are the paths that these unique individuals are taking in this ever-changing world? Let's get started. What's up guys? Welcome to another episode. This time is picture here as a guest, and he has a very interesting profile. He is right now a consultant engineer working in the food and beverage industries. He's right now in California. He is a UC Davis graduate, but I don't want to say that much about him. I think that the best person for that will be Victor himself. So Victor, can you let us know a little bit more on you, on the background that you have in education, and a little bit more on the consulting life? Of course. First off, thank you for having me on your podcast, and very happy to be here. To kick things off, just a general overview. So I went to school at UC Davis in California. I went through school. I didn't do a lot of internships while I was in school, but I did a lot of research in the lab, and I did a little bit of an independent project. I've done a couple independent projects when I was in school. And since graduating from UC Davis, I applied around, and I ended up landing a job with a consulting firm working in the food and beverage industry, like you said. And what I do now is I do design build projects, mostly on capital projects, for food processing facilities. And so we design the equipment. We'll write bid packages and scopes of work for the actual contract work. We'll subcontract it out. We'll manage the construction, and then we'll do startup and commissioning to get the equipment running. So overall, it's a really good use of my degree. It's very relevant to what I learned in school, and it's been a good career. And I like it so far. It's really interesting and engaging. That's great picture. So before we go to the main core of the episode, which is what does a chemical engineer as a consultant in the beverage and food industry does. Let's start with your education. So do you say that you went to UC Davis? Can you let us know first why did you select the chemical engineering and why UC Davis? Yeah. So the question of why UC Davis is probably easier to answer. It was the best school I got into. So when I was done with high school and I was applying to schools, I knew I wanted to do something. I knew I wanted to go to college. So college was my intended career path. I knew I wanted to do something technical. I didn't know chemical engineering at the time. I was actually undeclared when I applied, but I applied to the CSU schools in California and the Cal State schools in California. And UC Davis was the best most well renowned school that I got into. So I picked it and I was actually very happy with it. It was a great school. And what? Why chemical engineering? So you said you didn't even know about chemical engineering. So what sparked that? Let's say light for you to select chemical engineering. Yeah. So I kind of fell into it. Like I said, when I got into school, I was undeclared initially. And I just had a vague idea of what I liked. I knew I liked chemistry. I knew I liked math. I was good at it. And I knew I wanted to do something technical. And I wanted to do something hands on. I really liked working with my hands and working with things firsthand. So throughout my first year at school, I took a lot of math classes. I took some, I took a lot of chemistry classes. And I was trying to just figure out what would be a good fit for me and what I actually liked. And going through the classes, I basically narrowed it down my interests to either, okay, I could do chemistry because I find chemistry really interesting and engaging or I could do engineering because I feel like engineering is really interesting and engaging. And really, that boiled down to I think in high school, I had a really, really good chemistry teacher that really sparked an interest in science and the scientific method and doing experiments. Her name was Mrs. Preston and she was a really, really great teacher. She made the experiments interesting. We did a lot of design work with our experiments. And that whole process of designing and executing an experiment was great. And so I knew I wanted to do something kind of in that realm. And so by the time I was in school, I had that love for chemistry. I had that love for science and math. And so as I went through my classes, it kind of narrowed itself down in my mind. And I saw the choices in front of me as I could do chemistry if I wanted to be in academia and be a professor and go that route. Or I could do chemical engineering if I wanted to be in industry and do things hands on and be a more little, little more interactive with my work. And after some time pondering and thinking about it, I decided that I wanted to be in industry and I wanted to do things firsthand. And so chemical engineering was my selected career path. Okay, so that's a nice way to end up in chemical engineering. So why not mechanical because you wanted that chemistry part to be in the engineering? Yeah, so my my interest in chemistry was set from high school and my good experience in high school. And so I knew I wanted to do something with chemistry. And that's why I picked chemical engineering over mechanical or electrical or biomedical engineering or any of the other disciplines. I wanted chemistry to be part on my syllabus, but I also wanted to go to engineering. So I just made the easy decision to add chemical to the engineering part. So that's great. Can you tell us more about your university life? How was it? What subjects did you light? What what was let's say something that impacted your life in the university times? Yeah, so I mean university life was good. I didn't do any sororities or fraternities or anything like that. But one thing I did do is UC Davis has this kind of like an honors program. It's a little bit of an informal honors program. But I got invited to join this program. And freshman year, we were in the freshman dorms. And everyone in this program, it was called a DHC is the Davis honors challenge. And so everyone in this program lived on the same floor in our freshman dorm. And it gave me a really good avenue to meet some people, meet some people that were motivated, technically inclined, had a lot of really good similar interests. And that was a great way to, you know, break that awkward social barrier that can happen in school sometimes. And it is how I met a lot of my good friends that I kept throughout school and friends that I still know and still hang out with today. So I definitely think that helped me, that helped me have a good positive experience at school. And I recommend that to everyone. If you're in school, surround yourself with good people. You know, find yourself good study groups you work well with, surround yourself with good people that you like to do sports or like, you know, sports or other activities with. And just, you know, surround yourself with good people that you motivate and you bring each other up because it'll make a huge difference in your college experience. That's totally true, getting along with the people that you get, let's say, on the same ideas or the same goals, for example, because you can find a lot of people that will be also interested in going to crazy parties, getting drunk or not even studying. And then you will get also another example of people that are hardcore students don't want to have that much of a social life. They use school to study groups. So of course, always balance, but definitely make correct decisions on what are going to be the people that you surround and they will enrich your experience. So as you stated, so yeah, I also had that experience. I had a lot of friends which I keep in touch with and they not only I motivated them, but they motivated me to be better. And because they were always studying, I should study more because these guys are studying. So yeah. And the chemical engineering class was really collaborative and really supportive in the same way. you know, chemical engineering is not easy. And so there were a lot of times where we had difficult labs, difficult homework assignments, and there were, you know, many, many times where we would have a big group of chemical engineering students end up in our computer lab, and we would have 15, 20 people in there, basically at all times, and you'd have different groups that are working on different things. We would collaborate, we'd spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off of each other, we would work on our homework together, and it also helped a lot. We didn't have to suffer through the curriculum alone. We were able to help each other out a lot. I like that. You don't have to suffer alone. Victor, do you still get along with these, let's say, friends or colleagues and classmates? I don't know how you will call them, but do you get along with them? And where are they located? They stay in California or went to other states or maybe even countries for work? Yeah, so I've got a lot of people that I definitely still keep in touch with, both in and out of my chemical engineering curriculum. But from chemical engineering, one of my best friends from school, he actually is doing a PhD in chemical engineering now, and so he moved to Texas, and he's working on getting his PhD done. I think he's going to be done this year, which is very exciting. And I keep in touch with him. We talk very frequently. I'm going to go out to visit him in a couple of weeks to try and spend some time after I get done with this project. And so that's a very solid friendship that I've kept until today. That's nice. I also have very strong friendships created on my, let's say, university times. Okay, Victor, now let's pass to this little note which I have pending. Now that you, let's say you, you graduated from UC Davis and you started looking for work. Now, this little note that I have here is you didn't want to go to oil and gas. Why was it, even though California has, I've heard that they have good oil and gas opportunities, and especially I would say you're already in USA, which is a very huge country for oil and gas. You can go to Texas, you can move all that to those very large companies, Exxon, Chevron, or maybe even BP. So why oil and gas was not your priority? In chemical engineering, I feel like there's kind of a stereotypical career path where a lot of people in industry end up going into oil and gas. You know, you go to work for Chevron, or BP, or Selmer J, or whoever, and you end up in the oil fields and you make a ton of money, but it's really grueling work. My decision kind of boiled down to two things. So there were two factors that really influenced my decision. The first one was a little bit of a moral attachment that I had in that I was worried about, you know, long-term effect on the environment from oil and gas production and fracking and all that. And so it just wasn't a direction I wanted to head and put my energy into if I could avoid it. I wasn't so strongly, I didn't feel so strongly to the point where I would just flat out refuse anything, but I figured if I could focus my energy elsewhere to something a little more environmentally friendly or something a little more with a little more of a better community impact, then I would want to do so. And so that influenced my decision. The other part of it is that there weren't a lot of oil and gas related jobs in California or in the area that I grew up in and I wanted to stay kind of in California in my little California bubble. It seems like a lot of the oil and gas jobs were in Texas or more somewhere in the Midwest. And so that was another factor that influenced my decision is I would try and check out other industries first and see if I could find something closer to home. If not, if that proved difficult, then I would start to explore oil and gas as a potential career. That's a nice way to go. I also think that if the industry or the products or the processes are not quite accepted by your morals or you'll find it maybe not that ethical or especially if you can go just state it maybe we should not demonize or satanize this idea of oil and gas. But if you can do another thing, well, why not try give it a try or explore all your alternatives? Yeah, that's a good point. We don't need to demonize anything. I definitely don't demonize oil and gas or anyone working in oil and gas. It's more like I saw value in working in food or working in something environmental and so that's where I wanted to focus my energy and it's very much a personal decision for everyone. True. Yeah, I also think that if we demonize oil and gas especially as chemical engineers will be a little bit counterproductive because the main essence of chemical industry, well, overall industry is energy and most energy comes from oil and gas. So if you're against oil and gas, then you should be against most modern industry. So that's a very philosophical moral quantum that every engineer should make of his own or Harold. So Victor, now talking about this part that you were telling me that you wanted to avoid oil and gas and we were talking about your first month searching or hunting for a job. So you told me that you wanted to wait until the correct or not correct, but the proper job offer came. So can you explain us a little bit how was your experience since you graduated, how did you search for a job, how many interviews did you achieve or all these six months of maybe not suffering, but intense job search was for you. Yeah, I would call it six months of dedicated effort in the job search. After I got out of school, you know, I graduated in June, roughly, and I didn't end up getting my job until late December, the end of the year, the end of the year is when I started. So it's about six months of searching and working my connections and trying to find a good fit before I landed at my current job. It was a difficult process. The job search is not easy. After school, there's the stereotypical issue or the conundrum of trying to find a job that will give you experience, but at the same time, you don't have experience to put on your CV or your resume. So it's difficult to, you know, present yourself in a really appealing way. It was tough and I interviewed a lot. I probably did. I mean, I probably did hundreds of applications and I probably actually landed. I want to say maybe around 25 or 25 and 30 interviews that were either on the phone or in person. And then I ended up boiled down to three, three really solid potential opportunities. One was a internship, like a paid internship that I would start at, at a company that made fillings for teeth. They made like titanium fillings and they made other different types of dental equipment. And so there was like a material handling position available. Another one was to be a manufacturing tech at a biotech firm, which was really interesting, but, you know, looking back on it, it would have ended up being more of like an operator position. And that job was, that opportunity was interesting because I saw potential in it, like I could start off as a manufacturing tech, and then I could try and do a good job, work my way up, and hopefully apply internally for a process engineering position at the same biotech company. And so I saw potential to go the route I wanted and to get into process engineering through that initial job, but it would have been an upheld battle. And so what ended up happening is that I was offered that job. While I still had applications that were out, I accepted it. I actually worked there for a little bit. I worked there for a week. And the first day that I started at that biotech firm doing manufacturing, I got an offer from my current job for the consulting firm. And so I had to decide if I wanted to keep that job and try to work my way up into engineering through that company, or I could go through the painful, arduous process of resigning, moving my stuff out of San Francisco, packing up, moving all the way down to Southern California again, and restarting my career at this consulting firm. And that's what I ended up doing. The main driver for that decision was that the consulting firm was a dedicated engineering position. And ultimately, that's what I wanted to do. And so that's why I took it. I didn't know about that first, let's say week of work. Thank you for sharing it. Because many may find it like, no, I should not share this because people might see it maybe incorrectly or this loyal, whatever thing people may think, I think it's very important to always be able to change ideas. And if you want to change, especially in work or this. important decisions in life. It's very important to ensure that you're going to feel correct in the current that you are dying. So if you don't feel completely satisfied and you're always wondering on what if I go there or what if I don't get this job. So I think you did the correct decision or would you say it's the correct decision right now Victor? Yeah absolutely you know I'm glad I made that decision I'm glad I made the I took the leap of faith because not many people will I know people will even say no you know I know it's the best thing that I should do but I feel bad for this company that I am just one to three days working here it will be bad for them so now I will crush my dreams stay there maybe a couple months fine another job but no the best thing is to be honest to yourself and also honest to the company that you're working at the moment because if you're not happy there if I were the let's say the team boss or team leader I will tell you yeah go if you're not happy here I don't need you or I don't want you because I need people that is 100% committed to the project to the work and if you're having doubts well I think it's way better for both of them to make their own paths so congratulations Victor on making the correct decision and I'm happy that you backup your current decision thanks I'm happy about it too how was it the let's say the process for getting that job did you got many interviews did you have many exams interview or case studies how was it the process of getting the current job so it's there were not a lot of steps along the way it was basically I I filled out the application through UC Davis I waited for a response I eventually got a phone call saying that they found my application they were interested I followed up and I said absolutely I'm interested you know when can we set up an in-person interview and with my job there's a lot of travel involved you know I didn't know that at the time but I do now and so their schedules for the people in charge of hiring their schedules were really packed and it was very difficult to find a time where we could do an interview so from my perspective I thought okay I don't want to lose momentum I want to I've got a good I've made a good impression so far I did well on my phone interview and I want to move to the next round quickly so I actually scheduled an interview for the next day even though they were in Karlsbad and I was in Palm Desert so I was two hours away and so I scheduled it for the next day for the following morning I packed at my car drove out and I did the interview as soon as I could because that was the first opportunity that I could grab both of the hiring managers in that office nice and did they interview you on site or how was how was it so we were in an office the office was fairly small back then and so first I got called and I did the phone interview with them over the phone it was very impromptu and is very quick they basically asked about my you know schooling hobbies what I like to do why I like engineering what I you know why I want to work for them all that kind of stuff and then the next day I drove out for the in-person interview and there were three people that were in on the interview oh sorry they're only two I interviewed the third person actually I didn't interview the third person so there were two people in the interview on site in their office and I met with both of them and we basically went through a detailed look at what they do so what kind of projects they work on what kind of drawings and what kind of plans they look at I didn't know what a P&ID was back then and so piping an instrumentation drawing for those of you that also don't know but so they showed me a set of drawings and they're like hey you know do you know what this is like this is a system that we did and we talked through it and I was really really interested they kind of got me hooked from there and I played that I played on that interest I used it to my advantage and I asked questions I made sure I fully understand what the drawing was what how the process works how they go through projects and that's how I kind of conducted the interview for my end is I played it from the perspective of I'm very interested in this company in what you do I want to know more and I just asked questions I had a good discussion I made sure I understood how the process works so I could speak about it intelligently and then at the end of the interview I just reiterated I'm like hey you know the work you guys do is really cool I'm really interested I want to learn more and I think I could be a good addition to your office that's very important all the ways to show interest many let's say profiles or let's say candidates will be there and they don't want to say I don't want to be that extreme or that curious and I will say the reverse try to show interest because lots of the interviews more how you interact with the team and if you're not truthful and maybe you're interested or maybe you are not interested they will see that well this candidate is not quite interested on the topic we should pick this guy Victor which is very excited and he's all lean and he's already in the company himself so congratulations on that Victor definitely a very important aspect for interviews yeah I think so Victor now now that you are right now I think you are five years already on the consulting company or how do you say consulting company or engineering firm I'd say consulting firm okay the consulting firm so let us know more about the projects that you yourself have been working on and the a little bit more on the company what do they do for what type of products or processes how is it the work in your current consulting firm so it's neat the nature of consulting is that you're generally always working on like a challenging topic or a challenging project and you know projects change from time to time or the thing I'm working on changes and it varies project by project so I naturally get a lot of exposure to different things different processes different projects and the way the company works is we do they call it design build projects for you know food and beverage industries and it's essentially we do a capital project where we want to build a new plant or we want to add a new production line and we design a production line we'll spec out and size all the equipment we'll get quotes we'll get everything on order so we do all the procurement will you know write up the scope of work all that equipment needs to be installed needs to be rigged in the place installed needs to be piped to need power and so we'll write up the scope of work so that we can actually hire contractors to do that work you know I'll go out in the field I'll be a construction manager and I'll help oversee the installation to make sure everything goes in properly and then when the construction is done we get into startup and commissioning so we power on the equipment we start to run water we do test batches and we run and commission the system as a whole to make sure that it does what the client wants it to do and everything is client focus and client-based so really the client will have a goal or an objective they want to reach so they say I want to make you know 10 millions of gallons 10 million gallons of yogurt per year starting next year and then we'll kind of work backwards from there and we'll figure okay we need x number of tanks you need x number of pumps they need to be this big we need to size them for 250 gpm we need valve manifolds here and there etc and so that whole process is basically what we do we will facilitate the design and execution of a capital project sounds great it sounds like the typical dream you will have once you finish your chemical engineering degree you want to go and design and operate plan so what do you think about it is was it something that you wanted to explore when you were in graduate yeah you know I didn't when I was a new grad I didn't even know what my options were very thoroughly I had not spent a lot of time thinking about like working in the plant versus being a consultant versus you know different types of career paths I just knew you know vaguely that I wanted to work on systems I wanted to you know design systems and do engineering I really know what that meant and so kind of I was open to possibilities and so when the opportunity came up to do this type of work I was open to it and I just I went down this path and this is the direction I just started ahead okay so what what are your colleagues right now are they chemical engineers or they let's say you're boss or the head of the firman what are they are they engineers are they scientists all most of the people in the company are engineers and we have a lot of process engineers we may have more. Or I think we have more process engineers than other disciplines, but we do have fully fledged engineering arms in the other disciplines, like in my office, we have mechanical engineers, we have electrical engineers, we have a controls engineer, and then non-engineering disciplines, oh, we have packaging engineers too. And then non-engineering disciplines, we have our administrative project managers that help with accounting and they help with contracts and all that. We have construction managers that are dedicated, that help facilitate construction work and ground work and site work and all that kind of stuff. And then the technical project managers are typically engineers that have moved up in the system and they've started to take on the project management from the technical perspective. So the project managers at my company are usually the most technically proficient people on a project, on any given project, which I know is not necessarily the case in every company. But I think it's very important right to the guy that is leading the team that he should actually know what's going on, what do you think about it or where do you think someone that doesn't know that much? Well maybe someone that moves good teams, he may not be that required to know the technical stuff, but I will say that someone that is leading a team should know what's happening and maybe even helping the senior and junior engineers. Yeah, so I agree. I mean, from my perspective, I think it works well. I think it makes us more efficient and it makes it so that the team can all be on the same page. You know, if you have a project manager that can communicate about technical issues and technical solutions with every single engineering discipline, we can talk about pressure drops and flows. A PM can talk about pressure and flow with me, they can talk about controls and wiring with the electrician or with the electrical engineer, they can talk about HVAC requirements and psychrometrics with the mechanical engineer. And if they can come up with a vision for the project in their head and if they can have those conversations and give proper direction to all the different disciplines, I think it makes the team work really efficiently. They are in all the areas. So talking about them, what are they or let's say typical curriculum of these people or these leaders, are they started like you going for a consulting firm right away or did they work in food industries or processing engineering roles, what's the main structure of their curriculum? So a lot of the times it's been engineers that have joined the consulting firm or a consulting firm, they've worked in the industry in that capacity and they've done enough projects and they've done enough time in the field to pick up that technical expertise. And so once you do enough of that, once you do enough projects, they've been able to move up into the technical project management realm so that they can then manage projects and have those technical discussions with that level of expertise. Nice. So do you expect to eventually go to that type of role or do you want to explore something else? Yeah, it's kind of the direction I'm headed. You know, I like working in teams and working with teams a lot. And in my last couple of projects, I've kind of taken on the role of a project coordinator. So I'm trying to do a little bit of that, trying to do a little bit of control's work and help coordinate, help manage the process team to make sure that everyone's on the same page or being efficient. So yeah, I think at some point I'll make it there. It sounds like a very dreamy job, right, to be the senior design head of the process and I'm pretty sure they also have a lot of contact with the client themselves, right? Yeah, there's a lot of client facing that goes on with that job. So that's also important to have some soft skills being developed not only in the technical part, but also soft skills to approach these type of problems either with the clients or with the team. Yeah, it helps, you know, if you're comfortable talking with people and you can discuss ideas on the fly without too much preparation. You can work with clients, you can work with other contractors, you can work with other engineering firms. Yeah, it helps. And most of your clients are in California or do you get clients from all the USA? No, so they're all over. You know, we were largely USA based for a long time and now we're doing more international projects. So you know, a couple of things that I've done, like I've worked on a Greek yogurt system in Tennessee. We designed a Greek yogurt processing skid and a, what's the word, a culture injection tank. And we helped put together and start up the Greek yogurt system in Arizona. I did a bulk juice batching system. So we put in a couple of large tanks and unloading system and then we fed juice to their blending and bottling operation. And then for a long time, my biggest project so far, I worked up in Canada, up in, up is about an hour west of Winnipeg, but I was doing the design and construction management for a potato processor. They were making like French fries and, you know, hash browns and tater tots and those kind of products. And so it's, you know, everything A to Z and it's all over the place. You know, US and Canada, but I know we've done some jobs elsewhere too. Yeah, we've got office in Brazil, so I know we did a lot of stuff in Brazil now too. And now this is a question on nowadays, the pandemic or how are you coping with that or the company is doing as it's mostly online or you're still trying to travel the most that you can? We weren't completely unaffected, right? We were hit a little bit when COVID came crashing down. But the food and beverage industry is largely inflated from events like that. You know, no matter what happens, people still need to eat. The industry keeps running. And that's what we noticed. A lot of our projects, it seemed like if the project had already started, so if construction had already started or if a project was close to being completed, it stayed the course. And people, you know, plants and job sites put in. They enacted a lot of COVID response guidelines. So everyone had to wear masks. We do pre screens every day. We get our temperature texted checked every day. We keep our distance, we have to minimize meeting sizes, et cetera, et cetera. But if a project was still being planned or designed and it hadn't necessarily started yet, like if we hadn't broken ground yet, then those got put on hold. So like I had a cheese-like product project and a wastewater system that we were working on that got put on hold for a couple months. And now it's just now picking back up and starting to resume. Yeah, I think the food industry definitely is one of the few industries that will still be there present. And of course, it's affected because people cannot move that much. But as you stated, everyone got to eat. So for this, not going to be finished. So projects will not stop. Okay, Victor, one little thing I have also here as a note is that you stated that the PLCs are important for the food industry. So let us know why you got that idea or why are they very important in the control and automation of food industry. In chemical engineering curriculum, there's a little bit. There's a taste of control is not a mission. You know, at least in my, at least at Davis, we looked at transfer functions. We did, you know, planning with lipos transforms and stuff like that. And we did a little bit of work around controls and automation and that kind of stuff. But it was really just one class and it barely even broke the surface. Since I've been an industry, especially food and beverage, I've realized or I've come to know that like automation and PLC programming is very, very widespread. And I like it a lot. I think getting into the controls, getting into the logic is really neat and interesting. So it's something that I have dedicated time to learn about to become more familiar with. And I think it's a good skill for any chemical engineer to pick up, at least if they're going to be an industry because it seems like process design and process engineering and controls and automation engineering really go hand in hand. You know, I size the pumps and the valves and tanks and then we get a programmer on site that writes the code that runs the pumps and the valves and feeds the tank. If I can design a system with pumps and valves and etcetera and I can think about how that system needs to be programmed, you know, my pump is going to be on a VFD and it's going to run based on the level that we get from this tank. And I want the response to be a little bit slow, but I want it to make up a fast response if it's been offset for too long. If I can describe that to the programmer and I can help them write the code and tweak out any bugs, then it makes my life easy. It makes their life easy and it ultimately results in a higher quality process design. Everyone is happy then. Victory is very interesting because I interview one friend of mine, I think two days, maybe three days ago and he's also working in a food industry company that's a it's called Puratus in Belgium and he told me the same thing on automation that he sees a lot of automation things going on so that's why I wanted to make a little note on this so it's funny to find that the food industry finds PLC control automator all these things a very crucial role so thank you for sharing Victor and one less thing I want to ask you so you told me or well you wrote that you want to maybe in a future become a teacher so tell us about this yeah you know I just I like helping people you know my current job I work with the other process engineers a lot and I work with other engineers and other disciplines a lot and I try and share the knowledge and the experience that I've gotten so far it one reinforces the knowledge for me and it helps reinforce the things that have come to know and two it helps other people with their development and it helps them you know be successful and I like that idea and I like that whole process so I like helping people however I can and I think you know later in life later in my career that would be a direction I'd like to go down is to get into teaching or to get into some other type of mentorship maybe it's like grade school high school teaching maybe professorship something like that I think would be a cool way to give back when I'm older and I can't take the stress of high you know angst engineering anymore teaching is always very I'll say I like it a lot because giving back it's also getting something yourself so it's a way to grow the community especially engineering community that we need a lot of professors or teachers that have been already in the industry because the problem sometimes is that a lot of teachers professors are only theoretical ones than they haven't been in the field they haven't been working on industries so it will be great to have you as a professor for example the time you were working on the Greek yogurt factory and you're stuck to working with these automation process and so on will be cool to hear yeah the cool stories and you know being in the field and starting up these systems you gain a lot of insight that you don't get working in an office you you may not know that you need to install a valve a certain way until you're in the field and you install it wrong and people are mad and you have to fix it right away being there what yeah it's that kind of stuff that you you know get from your career in the field that hopefully you can share with some other people yeah little problems are not points rather are it's cash thrown away yeah okay so Victor let's start with the quick question and answer section number one what would you have to your beach or sea levels undergrad syllabus I would say could use more practical design work um the one thing I've thought about in the past that I use in my career but I never saw in school was like a pump pressure drop calculator I would have loved to have a class that like went through Bernoulli's equation in that way and showed me how to use it in something practical like a pressure drop calculator more lab applications gonna be done so lab is very important because you are hands on and you understand way better than calculations and equations and theoretical concepts it's way easier to see the exchange of heat or reactions or as you said it dropping pressure fluid movement than just writing stuff in a notebook I'm with you in that more like practicing also one more thing CAD experience I think if there was a little bit of CAD introduction in school it would help because I use CAD a lot now and I never touched it in school like piping what exactly which CAD yeah so AutoCAD I just use 2D AutoCAD and I use it to make piping drawings chemical engineers I think they sometimes they have CAD with chemical engineers it's very rarely that I've heard someone actually learning CAD in the universe yeah but it's useful so I don't know why so yeah it's strange maybe it's expensive but I don't think so because the spin plus and high seaside it's also expensive and they have it so yeah who knows next question underrated stuff in chemical engineering underrated stuff I would say pressure drop and the idea of pressure drop in Bernoulli's equation and being able to intuitively understand how pressure drop works is underrated I think like I think we touch on it a little bit in school and in fluid dynamics but I feel like I didn't spend enough time getting familiar with it okay that's very punctual now we're going to the other side overrated stuff in chemical engineering overrated so like you kind of mentioned it but like we used Aspen and Matlab a lot of Davis and Matlab was cool I liked Matlab Aspen was I it was it had some things that were nice and certainly if you really wanted to model a chemical process or a process and see what the outlets or what the you know products were going to be it's useful but at least for me in my experience and for my career it just wasn't useful it has very interesting limitations so for example would you be able to model certain processes right now on the industries that you have been working on or would you always say it's always missing something like in Aspen yeah well I haven't used Aspen in five six years so I don't know that I would be able to model okay yeah I maybe I could figure it out I know the process well enough now just intuitively to probably figure it out but I don't know I don't know what I wouldn't necessarily get out of Aspen that yeah I don't know what I would get out of using Aspen that I wouldn't be able to do just with some calculations in Excel to kind of balance things otherwise your favorite subject back then I really liked organic chemistry I thought it was fun even though it wasn't super related to what we're doing but okay I was really really fun and then we had a class that was called mathematical methods which I don't even know how to describe it but we used MATLAB to go through a lot of derivations and to use some governing equations to model systems so like we would model heat distribution and so we would make a heat map and then we'd use MATLAB to spit out a color coordinated heat map and we did projects like that and we looked at you know governing equations for heat transfer and mass transfer and that was kind of any class it was really difficult but that was it was fun your numerical methods class sounds way better than mine mine was solving very classical examples Newton-Rapson methods Simpson rule all those iterations stuff well it's nice to hear that you were applying the mathematical models to actual chemical engineering so that class was mostly for chemical engineers or was it for all engineers no it was upper-div chemical engineering so it was only chemical that's nice nice one quick tip for chemical engineering students sure so especially on the hunt for jobs so with my company Dennis groups name my company and I don't think I ever mentioned that but with Dennis group I've done a little bit of hiring we go to career fairs and so I help interview students and I help bring them on the students that stand out all have some like project or some thing they've worked on one good example a guy we actually hired he worked on a pump and water level like balancing system I think it was designed for golf courses but he had that project that he worked on and he worked on it very independently and he could talk about balancing the flows balancing the pressure making sure the pump was sized correctly and he could talk about it with enough proficiency that I knew he was you know gonna be yeah he was technically strong and that I knew he knew he was what he was talking about so stuff like that an independent project or something that you can put on your resume and that you can talk about with like someone in hiring I think it's such a side and it looks really good just oh I'm also in that whenever you're finally student doing stuff of their own or maybe they can be in team but definitely shows that they're diligent that they like to work and go for more so that was a very nice example and nice deep guys you have it in mind if you want to have better chances on the job hunt go for extra projects okay let's pass to the professional life section so before the jobs we were talking about did you have any let's say first let's say job like waiting tables or I don't know whatever that yeah I had I had the two kind of neat jobs the first job I ever really had over a summer when I was in school I worked at a lock shop so I like I maintained locks I would cut keys for people and I would rebuild locks with like the pins and everything so that was kind of neat and then also while I was searching for my job my career job I was working at an art gallery so I was like an art handler and I would hang up art I would help move things around and so that's also kind of a unique job it was fun I learned a lot about hanging stuff and how to hang things properly so look at it leafleasing on a wall you use it on your daily life at your home at home also in the office we move to a new office and they asked for help our office manager asked for help hanging stuff up. And so I was like, yeah, I got a cover. Don't worry. Perfect. So maybe that was the actual reason you got the higher road. [LAUGHS] Yeah. They secretly knew I had that skill. Next question. What are the top skills that you will expect from a chemical engineer? Top skills, I would say, an intuitive understanding of pressure and flow. So if you can talk about pressure and flow and how to balance pressure and flow in the pressurized pipe system, I think that goes a long way. Also, mass balance. Like, if you can do a good mass balance, and you can extrapolate the data to figure out how much storage base you need, how much, how many deliveries you need, if you need x-pellets of your product delivered with x-frequency, then stuff like that. And you can derive that from a limited set of data through a mass balance, that's really valuable. OK. Who will you like to trade jobs with? It can be one day, one week, one month, one year. I would like to-- I mean, I've already said I really like controls. But I'm going to throw a curveball. I would like to trade jobs with the electrical engineer for a week. I know enough about electrical engineering to make control systems work. But still, it seems like magic to me. Just in general, you plug something in a wall, and then all of a sudden, it does all the stuff, and it turns on these pumps. You've got relays and transformers and whatever. It just seems like magic. So I would take that job and try to learn some more about it. Nice. OK, related to this or might not be related. What is or would be your dream job? I think being a really technically proficient project manager is my dream job. If I could run a project from start to finish and I could run things smoothly and keep a good schedule and keep everyone in line and keep everyone for being overworked, that would be really solid. I'd be happy with that. One underrated job in chemical engineering. It can be an operator level. It can be whatever level. But something-- a job which is underrated in the chemical industry. Underrated. Maybe-- oh, I was just talking about a guy today. I would say like wastewater, something in wastewater. If you can get a wastewater-- it's more on the operator side. But you can get a wastewater certification or a license. And you can get a really solid job making really good money doing wastewater and managing a wastewater system and wastewater is everywhere. Every plant produces wastewater. And every city has a wastewater plant for treatment. And so there's opportunities all over. Yeah, that's true. It's like food. As long as there is food, there must be water. Even in water, I would say it's way more important. OK, now this is a random jet. It can be interesting on your behalf. How often do you use the Laplace transform? Never. Never since school. I've been asking this. It's still waiting for someone to tell me maybe once a year. I don't know. One day, you might get someone. Yeah, maybe it's someone in Australia in automation without a key is going to tell me. One day, I didn't have one computer. Now, I used the Laplace transform for some calculations. Although OK, so one thing I did early on in one of my projects is how level sensors work, like a hydrostatic sensor. It tells you the height and water column. What I did is I put a level sensor on the bottom of a tank with a rounded bottom. And so I took the drawing and I modeled the-- What is it? I modeled the shape of a tank and I graphed it. And I used rotational symmetry. And I used the fact that there was rotational symmetry to model the shape of the tank so that I could create an equation that modeled the volume of the tank. And it required some integral work. And so I had to write the function that described the curve that matched the shape of the side of the tank. And then you integrate it with rotational symmetry. So that I could eventually get a function of the volume of the tank as a-- or see, I could get the volume of the tank as a function of the height so that I could plug that into the code and get it to display properly. And it was a really accurate representation of the current volume in the tank. As opposed to just modeling it as like a cylinder, which would be very inaccurate, or doing something rough like that. I was really proud. That was a good moment. Definitely a very underrated way to calculate volume. These are related. Best advice and worst advice. My best advice is to strike a balance. Don't burn yourself out. It's very easy if you're looking for a job or if you have a new job to work a ton of hours and put in a ton of effort to try and make good impression. But you can burn yourself out really easily. And it can make you disgruntled. And it can make you really frustrated with your position in life. So you have to strike a balance. If what you're doing is not sustainable, you got to do something about it. What was the worst advice you were given? Worst advice I was given. There's definitely some bad nuggets of knowledge that I've gotten. I don't know. I'd have to think about it for a second. Previously, we were talking about the oil and gas industry and the environment and making an impact on our world. So how long do you think we have left in this world? Or do you think we are going to fix all this stuff and eventually get back in track for a healthy, let's say, maintenance of the world? Man, I would love to say from an optimistic point of view that we're going to figure a shit out and fix the issues that we have and create a sustainable environment. But with current trends, if I strap laid out the data, it doesn't necessarily seem that way. But I do have faith. I have faith in technical people and I have faith in smart people that put effort into problems. And I think there's a lot of great strides that are being made that I don't even know about. And so I think the smart people of the world that are putting in effort and long hours to fix things, I think they will eventually fix things. Let's hope it gets fixed fast. Let's see how it goes for us. And so random facts. What do you use to get active in the workplace? Coffee, tea, energy drinks? So I am a coffee drinker and I'm a huge coffee drinker. I do like energy drinks, but I don't drink them that much. I feel like I get a little bit too wired on energy drinks. And then also a habit I picked up in college that's just really efficient is caffeine pills. So I kind of always have caffeine pills with me. I keep them in my bag at all times so that if I have to get up early for a flight or if I have to get up at 2 a.m. to do something at a plant that I have a quick reliable source of caffeine on hand. Well, that I didn't expect. So nice tip. A hobby that you want to develop, it is not a hobby that you have right now, that it's a hobby that you have maybe always wanted to play an instrument, play a sport, learn something. I would like to get better at soccer. I don't play that much and I never really played. And I played a little bit last year and I'm really bad. But it's a good sport and it's a good workout. And I would like to pick it up and practice more. OK, now last question and random facts. What are your favorite series that you recommend to chemical engineers? I don't know about specifically to chemical engineers. But in general, I like Dr. Who is kind of cool. It's also a little like techie and sciencey. So maybe it's applicable. But Dr. Who is good. I also am like, you know, I like animated shows too. So like Avatar last year, Binder was really good. I like that show. Oh, let's see, what am I watching? What did I just finish watching? There was a show that I binge watched pretty recently. I can't remember what it is. I can't remember. But yeah, Dr. Who and Avatar are both pretty solid. Great. I'll give them a look. I've heard a lot of Dr. Who, but never actually checked out the series. So I might do it this weekend. So thank you, Victor. Those were the questions. Thank you for the recommendation. Going to end the episode soon. Do you want to make a final statement closure? Yeah. So, you know, I've talked a lot about like, I've given advice to people looking for jobs and stuff like that. And I would just say, you know, stay the course. Stay true to your interests. If you're looking for a good job or if you're in a job and you want to do something else, or if you're interested in something else, put in the time to play to your strengths, figure out what you like, figure out what you don't like, you know, try things out. So you can see if you like them. It can be hard to make long lasting career decisions on a whim. And so I think if you can try things out, see what you like and play to those strengths, it's going to make you happier in the long run. OK, yeah, that's a very nice advice. Thank you, Victor, for being with us in the show. I hope you liked being part of the chemical engineering guys' podcast. And hopefully we will have you in future shows for whatever topic maybe you want to explore for. Yeah, man, I love that. It's an experience. Perfect. Well, that will be everything. See you guys in the next episodes. Bye bye. Thanks for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And before you go, I will really appreciate it if you take the time to share this podcast with your fellow colleagues, classmates, friends, or really anyone that might be interested on the topic of chemical engineering and its related fields. If you found this content helpful and valuable, please consider subscribing, writing, and leaving a review. Thank you so much for your support. It really means a lot.