Advanced Motorsport Mechatronics MSc student Dan Simpson reflects on induction week

Dan Simpson is an Advanced Motorsport Mechatronics MSc student. Here, he talks about his experience during induction week and explains why he chose Cranfield.

Going into induction week as an undergraduate, new to the area and to Cranfield, I was reminded of my first experience of moving out to university. Much like that time, my introduction to Cranfield left me at the end of the week, excited and nervous, with a close group of course mates and a handful of friends from other courses, and driven to take on the challenge of the next year.

The first day was slow, getting through the formalities of getting student ID cards and registering. However, this process let us all talk to each other within the queue and allowed us to get to know campus and, more crucially, the Cranfield Student Union!

The best part of the induction process at Cranfield was getting to know my peers in a productive way. In this, we didn’t just stand up and say one fun fact about ourselves, but actually got to find out how we each communicated, worked, and what we were interested in, through casual design projects, serving both to bond us as a cohort and get us back in the groove of university-paced engineering work. Further to this, these sessions, although casual, were structured to allow for learning, even at this early stage. The points and reasoning for failures in torsion tested space frames (made from pasta) were explained, to encourage us to always relate our studies back to practical applications.

Beyond this, the lecturers were kind with their time, as well as being very welcoming. They gave excellent casual lectures, again bringing us up to speed, where we got to know useful information as well as the style of how lecture content would be delivered and it felt as though we got to know the beginnings of each lecturer’s (as well as the great support staffs’) personalities.

Overall, the process allowed me to meet lecturers and course mates in such a way as to make us feel included and encouraged, as a team of colleagues. The university made a great effort to ensure this and that we were fully prepared for our studies, onboarded to the systems and excited to learn. I look forward, very eagerly, to what this year holds and I can’t wait to get stuck in.

Getting to know Dan

I chose the MSc in Advanced Motorsport Mechatronics because…

…having reviewed my options for postgraduate motorsport qualifications, it was the best! It was all I was looking for in terms of attitude to course management, the teaching is the highest level, and there is a passionate connection to industry and employers. Having moved from my BEng university, where I’d studied motorsport engineering too and who’d given me an MEng offer, the upgrade is massive, comparable to the upgrade I felt going from sixth form to university initially.

This year, I am most looking forward to…

… graduating! Working on the Group Design Project is going to be awesome, working initially with a small team and then combining teams and ideas to deliver our best product will be awesome. It will be great to work on an industry spec project too.

After graduation, I hope to…

…work within a motorsport team, competing in an international series, with the goal of travelling with them to the circuits on the calendar and working on systems.

Three words I would use to describe myself:

Outgoing, passionate and willing-to-try (if that counts as three!).

An interesting fact about me:

I aim to sail around the world before I die, following in the footsteps of Ellen MacArthur, who’s a big inspiration of mine.