IMAGINE a place where everyone has to wear a white bunny suit, a helmet, gloves and glasses. Imagine a room a thousand times cleaner than a hospital theatric This is part of a world inhabited by a chemical engineer.
Fiona Lyons's first day on the job last summer was difficult enough, as she tried to recognise the various individuals who were introduced to her in the clean room. Rosy cheeks and strong chins can take on an extra special importance when every other feature is covered up. She smiles at the memory of trying to match the voice with the person when the bunny suits had been discarded.
Lyons, who is from Dublin, had set her sights on a career in chemical engineering long before her time to fill in the CAO form came around. "At school I was pretty okay across the board, but I always wanted to do engineering," she says.
"My dad is a chemical engineer. What he was doing always interested me when I was at school. He works in environmental science, developing clean-fuel technology. He Is very committed, and he's interested In what I do too." Today Fiona works at Intel in Leixlip, co Kildare, as a metal etch process engineer. The second eldest member family, she went to school at Muckross Park School in Donnybrook, Dublin. After her Leaving Cert, she went along with 280 others to UCD to complete her first year in engineering.
After first year, students are expected to choose a specialist field and, depending on their results they branch into one of a number of areas, such as chemical, mechanical, electronic, civil, electrical and agriculture and food engineering. Lyons was unable to do chemical engineering at UCD, but she continued her studies in this area by transferring to Cork RTC, which is the only other third-level college providing this kind of degree.
She recalls the work carried out by the class during her four years in Cork. "It's certainly not a doss," she says about her studies. "You have to be dedicated. You have to give it all you've got, especially if you want to get the honour at the end of it."
IN THIRD YEAR, students are sent to various plants to get work experience. Lyons was sent to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Ringaskiddy, co Cork. "That gave us a real taste for the industry. I found that really useful. They had just started up a new pharmaceutical organic synthesis plant. I was working in the actual plant, with big chemical reactors, pipes, heat exchangers."
In fourth year, two major projects are completed. The first is in design, done in part as a team project and in part as an individual project Lyons and three others had to design a plant that would produce 75,000 tonnes yearly of polyacrylonitrile The second project is experimental, and students work solo "I had to design, commission and build a rig to demonstrate laminar and turbulent flow," she explains. In particular, she says, these projects "were very good from the point of view of training you to work to schedule. They had very strict deadlines."
There were nine women and 11 men in Fiona Lyons's chemical and process engineering degree class at Cork RTC. The graduation ceremony of this small group took place in saddened circumstances last weekend, deferred from November because their colleague Denise O'Dea died suddenly of meningitis just days before the original date.
