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During the beginning of 2023, following a period where I felt that I was no longer developing my skills set, I decided to focus on learning programming.
For that, I enrolled at 42Porto, went through all online selection process stages until I could enroll in the Piscine of August 2023. The Piscine is the last stage of the selection process, and it is a 26-days challenge to learn the basics of programming and for our profile to be evaluated to see if it matches the requirements to be able to enroll in the course.
I was able to go through and on the first days of October I was starting the Common Core at 42Porto. On the first 4 ranks, where I am still at, the course focuses in C language. In later stages, it will focus on full-stack development using various frameworks.
As I was gaining interest on the course, I came to the decision of quitting my job as a mechanical engineer at Visblue to focus solely on the course
VisBlue is a spin-off company from the Universities of Porto and Aarhus and it is based in Aarhus, Denmark that develops Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries.
I worked from Portugal to continue the development of Flow Battery solutions started during the period I was a researcher at the University of Porto.
As a usual start-up company, VisBlue was an incredible experience that broadened my knowledge, while giving me a higher scope of action than I would expect from a consolidated company. I developed my work as a mechanical designer in design for production and production documentation but also had the opportunity to work in project submissions. And in those projects, in stack and battery assembly, in the battery management systems and in electrical design for flow battery models based on other chemistries. I was also in close contact and helped in project management.
I lead yearly review meetings with the full company to present the portuguese company results and developments, allowing any element of the team to make questions about all development work done throughout the year.
I took an important role in the development of the technology of the company and lead many communications and meetings with suppliers and partners.
As I was finishing my degree, I got invited to help a team from the chemical engineering department to design a Redox Flow Battery. The project was of great interest to me and helped me consolidate the knowledge from my degree as the work focused on mechanical design but I also had the opportunity to take part in the development of the system control of the technology.
At the Faculty of Enginnering of University of Porto, I got my M.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering in Automation with a final grade of 17/20 (grade A). As milestones of my course I can pinpoint two major achievements:
1. Following five eventful years, my final project as a mechanical engineer student was to design a prosthetic and active knee.
2. On my fourth year, I designed an abrasion machine with a 9-speed gearbox.