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A Maguiresbridge girl is racing ahead in the automotive industry after securing a job with motor racing giant, McLaren.
Bernie Collins from Maguiresbridge, who has just graduated from Queen's University, Belfast is off to McLaren's headquarters in Woking, Surrey, after helping Queen's to a podium position at the recent Formula Student competition at Silverstone.
Bernie recently graduated from Queen's with First Class Masters degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. She has secured a place on the prestigious graduate scheme run by McLaren's Formula 1 team.
As part of her Final Year project, Bernie was Team Leader of the Queen's Formula Student team. The team consisted of a design team of seven, with 15 engineering students helping to build the race car.
The Formula Student competition is run every year by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and competition rules state that a new car must be constructed every year.
Bernie has been involved Formula Student team for two years. In her first year, she worked on an individual project on brakes and this year she had a technical role working on suspension as well as being Team Leader.
As Team Leader, Bernie had to look after the day to day running of the team: "I had to organise getting the two cars and the team over to Silverstone and finding somewhere to stay in addition to my other technical duties.
"Formula Student is the biggest competition of its kind in Europe, involving over 2,000 students from 105 universities across 23 countries. It challenges university students to design, build, develop, market and compete as a team with a small single-seater racing car.
"It isn't simply a case of 'fastest car wins' - teams are judged on the car's speed, safety, reliability, cost and handling qualities.
"I was delighted to lead the Queen's team and gained hands-on experience that was invaluable in securing a place on McLaren's Formula 1 graduate scheme."
Queen's Formula Racing entered two teams the Formula Student competition, with both teams winning the National Instruments Award for Best Use of Data Acquisition thanks to third year student, Matthew Campbell from Carrickfergus. He developed a computer programme which allowed the team to gather information on and maximise the cars' performance. The Class 1(200) car finished a third in its class.
Talking about how McLaren came into the picture, Bernie explained how the company select a few universities and contact their engineering departments regarding their graduate programme.
Following her success with the Formula Student team, and her excellent degree, Bernie has now secured a one-year contract on their graduate scheme which will see her moved around the various departments of the Formula 1 (F1) team.
This is only the second year of the programme, but Bernie reported that the two graduates who were taken on last year's scheme have both secured permanent positions within the F1 team.
Bernie starts on 21st September and she already knows her package includes one race ticket. She will have to wait and see whether she will get to go all over the world with the Formula One World Championship.
Professor John Orr from Queen's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering said the competition had a strong reputation for producing top quality racing cars and, in recent years around half a dozen Queen's team members have gone on to work for Formula 1 teams, including Bernie who is the first female student from Queen's to do so.
He went on: "Formula Racing is just one of the many opportunities for hands-on experience available for engineering students at Queen's. Our undergraduate and postgraduate degrees prepare students for careers in many areas of high performance engineering - from automotive and motor sports to the aerospace industry.
"And under the STEM scholarship scheme, Queen's will award £1,000 to any student with three A's at A-level who enrols in an engineering course at the University."
