From school bench to work bench through an award
How does it feel to get a prestigious local award in engineering within a few months of graduating from the University of Malta and getting a job with a major local communications company?Manuel Magro has just gone through this experience after he won...
How does it feel to get a prestigious local award in engineering within a few months of graduating from the University of Malta and getting a job with a major local communications company?
Manuel Magro has just gone through this experience after he won the student project award competition organised annually by the Chamber of Engineers. His project was based on the feasibility of location detection in UMTS networks which provide the recently-launched 3G mobile service in Malta.
I-Tech caught up with Mr Magro, currently working as system engineer at Vodafone Malta.
"Winning the award was a pleasant surprise for me and undeniably I was very happy since I knew I was being rewarded for something for which I persevered," he revealed.
"I was always very enthusiastic about the idea of location detecting devices such as Global Positioning System (GPS). These types of portable gadgets can pinpoint your location to within a few metres wherever you are on the face of this earth," he explained.
"There are countless applications ranging from the conventional navigation, tracking and mapping, to more innovative uses such as asset management, machine guidance and nowadays even gaming! I thus wondered whether the most common portable device today, the mobile phone, could integrate similar functionalities with accuracies good enough to offer location-specific information to the user.
"I thought that with the inherent high density of cells within an urban environment and a modern network such as UMTS this should be possible. After some research on the topic and guidance from my university tutor, I finally decided that my project would focus on modelling location detection on a computer-simulated UMTS network."
Since the launch of 3G mobile service based on the UMTS standard in mid-August of last year the number of 3G users has risen significantly and is now in excess of 10,000.
This is very satisfying for the young engineer who believes 3G subscribers will continue to increase as more and more people realise the potential of 3G and more services are launched.
The young engineer's project is not a full-fledged system by a feasibility study. Although he proved his idea works, it could still be a long way before it applied commercially in Malta. Maybe there could be more opportunities abroad.
"To proceed from a stage of formation of ideas to actual implementation a great deal of work is required," he admitted. "The work I did in my project was intended as a proof of concept that such a system would work and that it could potentially be used. In order to develop a working system a lot of work would need to be done in perfecting the algorithms implemented and in testing the system on the live network. I personally believe that in Malta we would be limited by the amount of services that could be offered by this system due to the simple fact that Malta is so small. However, implementing this system in foreign urban cities would offer several benefits such as emergency localization and services like localized advertising and location-sensitive charging."
Mr Magro graduated from university last year after reading a course on the Faculty of Engineering.
"I believe that the most important aspect of the engineering course was not all the lecturing of academic material but indeed teaching us the concepts and showing us how to solve complex problems in a logical and systematic manner. In my opinion however, the course is somewhat lacking of practical work experience which could prove invaluable on the job. Having said this, I nevertheless have to say that I consider all the staff at the faculty as very capable individuals all of whom are professional and dedicated lecturers."
The issue of practical training is at his heart.
"My advice to university students would be to take their course seriously and work hard to achieve successful results while still trying to find some time to enjoy university life. I would also suggest trying to get involved into some work that is course-related so as to get a taste of what that particular job sector has to offer and at the same time gain some hands on experience."
Indeed, he feels he was lucky in finding a job with a major company such as Vodafone Malta as soon as he completed his studies at university.
"Although we, as engineering graduates, were given high hopes of finding a job with relative ease, I actually consider myself to be quite fortunate to be employed with such a prominent company as Vodafone. The company gave me the opportunity to work in the telecommunications field which was always my ambition, as well as to continue my professional development by providing for additional training both in Malta and abroad," he concluded.
Manuel Magro has just gone through this experience after he won the student project award competition organised annually by the Chamber of Engineers. His project was based on the feasibility of location detection in UMTS networks which provide the recently-launched 3G mobile service in Malta.
I-Tech caught up with Mr Magro, currently working as system engineer at Vodafone Malta.
"Winning the award was a pleasant surprise for me and undeniably I was very happy since I knew I was being rewarded for something for which I persevered," he revealed.
"I was always very enthusiastic about the idea of location detecting devices such as Global Positioning System (GPS). These types of portable gadgets can pinpoint your location to within a few metres wherever you are on the face of this earth," he explained.
"There are countless applications ranging from the conventional navigation, tracking and mapping, to more innovative uses such as asset management, machine guidance and nowadays even gaming! I thus wondered whether the most common portable device today, the mobile phone, could integrate similar functionalities with accuracies good enough to offer location-specific information to the user.
"I thought that with the inherent high density of cells within an urban environment and a modern network such as UMTS this should be possible. After some research on the topic and guidance from my university tutor, I finally decided that my project would focus on modelling location detection on a computer-simulated UMTS network."
Since the launch of 3G mobile service based on the UMTS standard in mid-August of last year the number of 3G users has risen significantly and is now in excess of 10,000.
This is very satisfying for the young engineer who believes 3G subscribers will continue to increase as more and more people realise the potential of 3G and more services are launched.
The young engineer's project is not a full-fledged system by a feasibility study. Although he proved his idea works, it could still be a long way before it applied commercially in Malta. Maybe there could be more opportunities abroad.
"To proceed from a stage of formation of ideas to actual implementation a great deal of work is required," he admitted. "The work I did in my project was intended as a proof of concept that such a system would work and that it could potentially be used. In order to develop a working system a lot of work would need to be done in perfecting the algorithms implemented and in testing the system on the live network. I personally believe that in Malta we would be limited by the amount of services that could be offered by this system due to the simple fact that Malta is so small. However, implementing this system in foreign urban cities would offer several benefits such as emergency localization and services like localized advertising and location-sensitive charging."
Mr Magro graduated from university last year after reading a course on the Faculty of Engineering.
"I believe that the most important aspect of the engineering course was not all the lecturing of academic material but indeed teaching us the concepts and showing us how to solve complex problems in a logical and systematic manner. In my opinion however, the course is somewhat lacking of practical work experience which could prove invaluable on the job. Having said this, I nevertheless have to say that I consider all the staff at the faculty as very capable individuals all of whom are professional and dedicated lecturers."
The issue of practical training is at his heart.
"My advice to university students would be to take their course seriously and work hard to achieve successful results while still trying to find some time to enjoy university life. I would also suggest trying to get involved into some work that is course-related so as to get a taste of what that particular job sector has to offer and at the same time gain some hands on experience."
Indeed, he feels he was lucky in finding a job with a major company such as Vodafone Malta as soon as he completed his studies at university.
"Although we, as engineering graduates, were given high hopes of finding a job with relative ease, I actually consider myself to be quite fortunate to be employed with such a prominent company as Vodafone. The company gave me the opportunity to work in the telecommunications field which was always my ambition, as well as to continue my professional development by providing for additional training both in Malta and abroad," he concluded.