Welcome as a PhD candidate Sofia Schön!
- Post by: Tobias Larsson
- 1st November 2024
- No Comment
Sofia Schön is an industrial PhD candidate with Saab that started October 25, 2024, signed up in Mechanical Engineering research education under Professor Tobias Larsson. She will be working close to the Marine Technology Center and the joint initiative between Region Blekinge and BTH.
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND?
My name is Sofia Schön, I’m a research scientist at Saab Kockums since a few months back and will now be an industrial PhD student together with BTH. Previously I was a PhD student in mechanical engineering at Linköping University. In autumn 2023 I defended my licentiate: Model Fidelity in Mission Scenario Simulations for Systems of Systems, a case study of maritime search and rescue.
On my free time I enjoy trailrunning, cooking and baking, knitting and crocheting. I used to take a lot of dance classes in modern dance, jazz, ballet and even pole fitness in Linköping, but sadly I haven’t found anything corresponding here in Karlskrona (yet).
I grew up in Ljusdal which is a very small town in Hälsingland. I left Ljusdal after high school to pursue an engineering degree. However, I didn’t know anyone who’d pursued a technical degree, nor knew anything about going to college for that matter. The closest university from home is two hours by train so growing up I never came in contact with academia. Applying to a five-year engineering school felt like a big step. The last night before admission was due, I freaked out, removed all engineering admissions and added any dance schools I could find in Sweden. The coming weeks my dad had to drive me across the country to various dance auditions, eventually I got into a one year dance education at Karlstad University. It was an amazing year, everyday was filled with dance classes. We also studied dance history, dance pedagogy, anatomy and health. We were a tight class of thirty girls and one guy (quite different from engineering) and spent all our time together. Somehow, I still missed school, I had always done well and I enjoyed solving problems in math’s and physics. While riding the bus in Karlstad I would look at car registration plates, take the three digits and add them to a second degree polynomial: firstNumber * X^2 + secondNumber*X + lastNumber (C constant) and then solve it according to the pq-formula, which you’re taught in high school. I told this to one of my friends, she gave me a strange but caring look and asked “Sofia, I love having you here with us but are you really in your right place?” After one year of dancing I picked up my old engineering admissions and found my number one choice (at the time) that was Linköping University. I went there on a visit through something called Quintek which is LiUs way of attracting more girls to their engineering studies. I visited a girl who studied product development, lived with her for a couple of nights and during daytime Quintek organized various visits on campus, lectures, workshops and a couple of visits to industry. I loved the atmosphere on campus, and the technology was something like I had never seen before! Confidently I applied to mechanical engineering in Linköping and was accepted. My master studies centered on product development, specifically design automation and multidisciplinary design optimization.
WHAT DO YOU DO IN RESEARCH?
My research centers on modeling and simulation of mission scenarios for Systems of Systems applications. Mission scenarios are events that play out within a limited time frame, typically hours, in order to achieve a certain mission effect. Through modeling and simulation, I study how different groups of systems perform in relation to these mission effects and then display trade-offs as decision support. This is what I will do at Saab Kockums to support the decision making for the future naval mine countermeasures system.
WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO BRING TO THE BTH COMMUNITY AND PARTNERS?
I will bring creativity and passion. Although I’m certain that already exists, without passion it’s difficult to stay persistent enough to conduct research.
Product development can be very creative when you get to design something new or find a novel solution to an old problem, but the creativity can also be quite limited when you design components for a complex product with narrow requirements. That’s probably why studying mission scenarios has been so compelling to me, you need to think about both tactics and technology when developing the model. You get to learn about the operational environment and the use of the product from the users’ point of view, as well as deep diving into some technological areas in order to understand future possibilities of the product design. It is very multidisciplinary and stimulating. However, it can also be frustrating to often feel like you don’t know everything about everything. With time, you start noticing similarities between subjects and that is when the creativity gets going! My strength is finding unknown unknowns, moving them to known unknowns and eventually to known knowns, and repeat. I hope this diligent way of working will add to the multidisciplinary knowledge of the team at BTH and Saab.
Additionally, I’ve been told I can bake delicious multilayered mousse cakes.