{"id":31697,"date":"2021-03-03T12:09:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T16:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/?p=31697"},"modified":"2025-03-30T12:52:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T16:52:59","slug":"industry-roundtable-speaker-rebecca-swaszek-recommends-honing-scicomm-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/industry-roundtable-speaker-rebecca-swaszek-recommends-honing-scicomm-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry Roundtable Speaker Rebecca Swaszek Recommends Honing SciComm Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Rebecca Swaszek was the invited speaker for a CISE Industry Roundtable held on Feb. 19th, 2021. Hosting the event was <\/span>Swaszek\u2019s advisor,<\/span> CISE faculty affiliate <\/span>Christos Cassandras, Head of the BU Division of Systems Engineering and <\/span>Distinguished Professor (ECE)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Rebecca Swaszek (PhD SE, 2019) is Systems Engineer, DOT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Swaszek is a Systems Engineer working in the Division of Aviation Systems Engineering at the Department of Transportation\u2019s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. As a federal employee at a fee-for-service institution, Swaszek works on multiple aviation systems projects for governmental (federal, state, municipal) clients such as the Federal Aviation Authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swaszek received a doctorate in Systems Engineering in 2019.\u00a0 Her work, \u201cData-Driven Fleet Load Balancing Strategies for Shared Mobility-On-Demand Systems\u201d, focused on smart cities\/transit, including the data-driven management of shared mobility-on-demand systems, (i.e. bike shares, autonomous taxis, Uber), to supplement or replace mass transit and private vehicles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Volpe has provided Swaszek the opportunity to apply her systems engineering expertise to the aviation industry. While some might consider that a departure from her doctorate, Swaszek says \u201cthe National Airspace System is a system like all others, comprised of interconnected components, underlying dynamics, and constraints.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Cassandras agrees, adding, \u201cSystems engineering is an interdisciplinary field, and while your PhD might focus on one subfield, all systems are related.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Swaszek is enjoying the breadth and diversity of projects offered at Volpe.\u00a0 She <\/span>emphasizes the importance of a PhD, which she says taught her how to think outside of the box and to take initiative to put her ideas into practice.\u00a0 \u201cWhile working on a project, I saw an opportunity where automation could help expedite progress and improve accuracy of data being collected. I wrote an algorithm and was able to successfully pitch it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Soft skills are important in industry,” says Swaszek. \u201cThe opportunities for presentations and public speaking offered at CISE are crucial to developing these skills.\u201d\u00a0 Swaszek explained that after she had developed her algorithm, she still needed to convince Volpe that it was worth adopting and without strong communication skills this would have been difficult. Cassandras also added that communication is an \u201cintegral part of research, the people who can best get across their ideas are the ones who tend to dominate the conversation and end up determining the next direction of the project.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Swaszek, a key difference between academia and the workforce is that in the workforce, you don\u2019t always have the time to get to the perfect, optimal result. Specifically at Volpe, which Swaszek described as similar to a consulting company, \u2018you\u2019re working on a strict timeline\u2019 with a goal of satisfying client expectations rather than striving for theoretical optima.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Swaszek noted that the transition out of academia can be difficult and unfamiliar. \u201cWhen I started at Volpe, it felt uncomfortable to not know everything,\u201d said Swaszek, \u201cbut that\u2019s normal. It\u2019s good for you to be in situations that are out of your comfort zone.\u201d She explained that in the first year of your PhD program, everything is new and can be confusing, but by the last year, you\u2019re an expert in your field. When you enter the workforce, you\u2019re again in a setting where you don\u2019t know everything, however, this presents you with a new opportunity to learn even more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Center for Information & Systems Engineering (CISE) Industry Roundtables are a forum to connect CISE students with CISE alumni to facilitate sharing information, insights, and experiences about post-graduation experiences and opportunities in an informal, dynamic atmosphere.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Rebecca Swaszek was the invited speaker for a CISE Industry Roundtable held on Feb. 19th, 2021. Hosting the event was Swaszek\u2019s advisor, CISE faculty affiliate Christos Cassandras, Head of the BU Division of Systems Engineering and Distinguished Professor (ECE). Swaszek is a Systems Engineer working in the Division of Aviation Systems Engineering at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18553,"featured_media":31135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[244],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31697"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33438,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31697\/revisions\/33438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}