Anel Garza Rivera - 2016-17 SPIE Women in Optics Planner
Optics Specialist, Research & Development, Vitro Automotriz, Mexico
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Country of Birth: Mexico Email: agarzari@vitro.com |
I was a curious kid and it has always been very important to me to find answers about topics that I couldn’t explain. My father was an engineer, and he used to talk about interesting problems that he had to face at work. We had fun together trying to find different ways to solve them.
I am working in optical engineering at Vitro Automotriz to improve the image quality of the windshields that are used in cars with head-up displays. I work also in R&D of new products and am developing an optical metrology system that will help manufacture free form surfaces with better precision.
In order to succeed you need to know how to handle failure. A career in science requires a lot of motivation, hard work, and you have to love what you are doing.
Being smart is not against being pretty or cute. I guess that if you really like science and doing research you have to consider the hard work and the time that you have to invest, but if you really like the satisfaction of learning new things and finding answers or making things work in a different way, it is worth the price. It is a pleasure to be able to use your brains for developing new ideas.
Enjoy what you do, and the hard work and the time invested will give you a reward. It is always important to have a balance between work and family, and science and engineering are so time consuming that it is very hard to keep this balance. This is something that you have to keep in mind.