Industry Roundtable Speaker Rebecca Swaszek Recommends Honing SciComm Skills
Dr. Rebecca Swaszek was the invited speaker for a CISE Industry Roundtable held on Feb. 19th, 2021. Hosting the event was Swaszek’s advisor, CISE faculty affiliate Christos Cassandras, Head of the BU Division of 系统工程 and Distinguished Professor (ECE).
Swaszek is a Systems Engineer working in the Division of Aviation 系统工程 at the Department of Transportation’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. As a federal employee at a fee-for-service institution, Swaszek works on multiple aviation systems projects for governmental (federal, state, municipal) clients such as the Federal Aviation Authority.
Swaszek received a doctorate in 系统工程 in 2019. Her work, “Data-Driven Fleet Load Balancing Strategies for Shared Mobility-On-Demand Systems”, focused on smart cities/transit, including the data-driven management of shared mobility-on-demand systems, (i.e. bike shares, autonomous taxis, Uber), to supplement or replace mass transit and private vehicles.
Volpe has provided Swaszek the opportunity to apply her systems engineering expertise to the aviation industry. While some might consider that a departure from her doctorate, Swaszek says “the National Airspace System is a system like all others, comprised of interconnected components, underlying dynamics, and constraints.” Cassandras agrees, adding, “Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field, and while your PhD might focus on one subfield, all systems are related.”
Swaszek is enjoying the breadth and diversity of projects offered at Volpe. She emphasizes the importance of a PhD, which she says taught her how to think outside of the box and to take initiative to put her ideas into practice. “While working on a project, I saw an opportunity where automation could help expedite progress and improve accuracy of data being collected. I wrote an algorithm and was able to successfully pitch it.”
“Soft skills are important in industry,” says Swaszek. “The opportunities for presentations and public speaking offered at CISE are crucial to developing these skills.” Swaszek explained that after she had developed her algorithm, she still needed to convince Volpe that it was worth adopting and without strong communication skills this would have been difficult. Cassandras also added that communication is an “integral part of research, the people who can best get across their ideas are the ones who tend to dominate the conversation and end up determining the next direction of the project.”
According to Swaszek, a key difference between academia and the workforce is that in the workforce, you don’t always have the time to get to the perfect, optimal result. Specifically at Volpe, which Swaszek described as similar to a consulting company, ‘you’re working on a strict timeline’ with a goal of satisfying client expectations rather than striving for theoretical optima.
Swaszek noted that the transition out of academia can be difficult and unfamiliar. “When I started at Volpe, it felt uncomfortable to not know everything,” said Swaszek, “but that’s normal. It’s good for you to be in situations that are out of your comfort zone.” She explained that in the first year of your PhD program, everything is new and can be confusing, but by the last year, you’re an expert in your field. When you enter the workforce, you’re again in a setting where you don’t know everything, however, this presents you with a new opportunity to learn even more.
Center for Information & 系统工程 (CISE) Industry Roundtables are a forum to connect CISE students with CISE alumni to facilitate sharing information, insights, and experiences about post-graduation experiences and opportunities in an informal, dynamic atmosphere.