I’m Menno Pernot, and I’ve been working at VIRO's Echt branch since December 2022. I was born and raised in Grevenbicht, a village next to the River Meuse in Limburg. When looking at my options for higher education while still at secondary school, I quickly came to the conclusion that I wanted to do a bachelor's in mechanical engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. After completing this degree, I followed the master's degree that goes by the same name. During my graduation internship at a company, I met someone from VIRO who was doing some work for them. I thought his work sounded incredibly interesting, so I went online to find out more about VIRO. The things I read and saw about VIRO really appealed to me, so I sent the company an application when I finished my graduation period.
I work in the Engineering Analysis Department at VIRO’s Echt branch with a team of 12 colleagues, where we analyse and calculate complex problems. At the moment, I’m working on a project to design a new model bus. My task is to model, simulate and analyse the construction. The biggest challenge for me in this project is that it involves so many different aspects. As you can imagine, a bus consists of a large number of very different components, all of which have to be modelled differently. This challenge is what makes the project so interesting; I’m learning so much!
In our team, it’s really easy and pretty frequent that we help each other. If someone needs to know something, there’s a good chance that a colleague will be able to assist. In our office, swinging your chair round to ask colleagues to share their thoughts on something is the easiest thing in the world. The entire department shares the same open space here, so I’m really enjoying both the work and the atmosphere!
