Just who is: Sung Peir Fen of ExxonMobil

Don’t bluff. We know that you don’t think women can do engineering.

We can read minds. You’re probably thinking: “most engineers are guys, it’s all about maths and science, and it’s about ‘nerdy males who design weaponry in the movies’.”

Hrmmph. Have you met Sung Peir Fen?

Woman, process engineer at ExxonMobil, and interviewed on 938Live in December 2009.

And you know what? Peir Fen’s just as sceptical when we spoke about perceived limitations for women engineers:

“Contrary to public perception, there are many female engineers in the petrochemical industry. In ExxonMobil, there are numerous women role models in management positions, for younger engineers like myself. They hold key posts in technical, operations, engineering, logistics and even construction management.”

If you think that she sits in a cubicle all day long… think again, because she…we’ll let her tell you about it herself.

One last bite – Steve Jobs, if you’re reading this post, Peir Fen would like to invite you to dinner ‘cause you are “innovative and constantly challenging norms”.

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Power up! Alternative sources of power

16-28 Feb 2010

Power = energy / time.

Energy converts over time to give us power. Question is: how much time do we have left before we run out of energy?

Perhaps that’s why radical ideas are floating around on the internet such as hamster-powered electronics where nanogenerators harvest biomechanical energy released from small, irregular and erratic movements… expect hamster sweatshops in dingy corners soon. For power on the go, bounce a Piezoelectric backpack to charge your Motorola Razr cell phone.

Cars are the worst consumers of fossil fuels. In response a couple students invented a water-fueled internal combustion engine for scooters to run on water. We hope that it’ll eventually graduate to water-powered cars. And mind you, don’t smoke away the next big biofuel… as scientists discovered that tweaking genes of a Tobacco plant can increase oil production by 20 times. How’s that for maxing out our fuel production?

On the grander scale of things, our trash can power a country if we can get plasma plants in Pulau Semaku. And someone’s making a fusion reactor to provide limitless energy at minimal cost to the environment. Now that’s the wet dream of all green physicists.

Got an idea that would power up our lives? Leave it in the comments.