“I started studying engineering at A-Levels, and my Head of Sixth Form told my mum that I would never go anywhere with it, which motivated me even more to prove people wrong! I don’t ever want anyone to feel like they can’t go into a certain industry because it’s more male or female dominated. Engineering comes in all shapes and forms!”

Ellie Windas; BEng Medical and Mechanical Engineering, 2023; Trainee Technical Specialist at Biosense Webster

Ellie Windas graduated in the last year with a BEng in Medical and Mechanical Engineering and is already in work that is rewarding and helps her to make a difference.

“Every day I go to work and I help change someone’s life,” she says. “My job also involves a level of trouble-shooting and problem solving.”

Having initially faced skepticism from her Head of Sixth Form over her chosen career, Ellie is now a passionate advocate for women breaking traditional gender roles and making their mark in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). She’s participates in events and discussions at the Women in Leadership Institute at Johnson & Johnson (Biosense Webster is a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson) and recently returned to the University of Hull to speak at a careers event focused on careers in engineering where she was clear she wanted to inspire people to think beyond what is expected of them and to strive to reach their own goals.

In this interview we hear about how Hull helped prepare Ellie for her career, how her work helps people with heart arrhythmia and how she experienced imposter syndrome when she was starting out.

How did your time at Hull help prepare you for your subsequent career?

The teaching at Hull taught me vital skills for my career, such as working independently to deadlines, as well as working with peers on projects like you would in the workplace. My job involves a lot of training and learning, so having gone through the same process and through university, where I was learning new things, relays in this job as now I know how I learn best and to deadlines. 

Also a skill that has really helped me in this role is reading and understanding patents and research papers, something I didn’t know would be so important in this job. A really crucial part in Biosense Webster is backing up everything we manufacture and produce with studies and evidence that our devices are the best and safest. We often have conversations with consultants about new products we are developing and products we already have out there, so making sure we can present them with the best and reliable research papers is crucial to back up our claims. 

Can you tell us about your current role working at NNL/Biosense Webster?

My current role at Biosense Webster is trainee technical specialist. The trainee scheme lasts around 18 months until I get promoted to Technical Specialist. My role is essentially an extension of the Cath Lab Team in hospitals all over the North of the UK, working in the Cardiology Cath Labs Day Procedures.

The patients being treated are people with heart arrhythmias, where the electrical circuit in their heart has a pathway that interrupts normal conduction. This causes an arrhythmia and the patient to be unwell with it and unable to go about their daily activities. Biosense works closely with consultants and developed Carto3, which is a device that diagnoses and treats arrhythmias. The device consists of lots of connections and machines, incorporating magnetic and sensor based technology to visualise catheters in live time on a PC monitor. Our catheters are plugged into Carto3, and access to the patient is gained in one of 3 places, most common is the groin area. The catheter then goes up into the chamber or the heart that the physician wants to map. The catheters are moved around the chamber to create FAM through Carto, and also local activation timing/voltage signals. This is so the consultant can understand where the arrhythmia may be coming from and what parts of the chamber are healthy or unhealthy. Using our catheters, it delivers RF energy to the desired part of the heart to treat the arrhythmia.

My job role is to run Carto during the procedure, build the maps, and to advise the consultant on the maps and give my interpretation of them. I am known as the ‘Carto expert’ in the room, and technology as we know can go wrong! So my job also involves a level of trouble-shooting and problem solving. 

What is the most important advice you can take from your own career experience that you would offer someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?

The most important advice I can give is keep on trying, and don’t stress when you may get told ‘no’, especially when interviewing and applying to jobs. I applied to so many jobs, some for companies I didn’t even care for, and attended my fair share of interviews and had my fair share of no’s! I thought at the time it was the end of the world and felt a bit lost. When this job came up I applied, expecting nothing to come of it, and I ended up getting it.

A really good bit of advice for interviewing at companies especially in MedTech, is do your research on the company’s values, and see if they align with your own values. Every day I go to work and I help change someone’s life, and that’s exactly what my company stands for. They don’t expect you to know everything about their products (though you should know what they are!) or everything about what they do. These companies are looking for people who really want to make a difference, not always just what they can write down on a piece of paper! 

What advice would you give to any women aspiring to work in STEM or become engineers? 

Don’t ever feel threatened or displaced being a woman in STEM. Good companies are desperate to expand their workforce and involve women. If you are worried, look for clubs that actively promote women in roles that may have not been the ‘gender-norm’ 50 years ago!! Johnson & Johnson have a Women in Leadership Institute, and we meet up every couple of months and have round tables to discuss how we can promote equality in the workplace and how we can educate men on making us feel more confident in the workplace. This helped massively when I had a bit of imposter syndrome in the beginning. 

What motivated you to return to campus to speak to students?

I’m always happy to speak about my experiences of getting into the industry. I started studying engineering at A-Levels, and my head of sixth form told my mum that I would never go anywhere with it, which motivated me even more to prove people wrong! I don’t ever want anyone to feel like they can’t go into a certain industry because it’s more male or female dominated. And that engineering comes in all shapes and forms!