Another week, another Women’s Wednesday! In this series, we want to put SimScale’s women into the spotlight and share their achievements, challenges, and excitements. In today’s edition, we would like to introduce Nevena who is part of our Technical Program Manager and Simulation teams. She joined SimScale in June of 2020 as a Senior CFD Developer and since then has accomplished great things.
What is your role at SimScale? What do you do?
I’m covering two roles at SimScale — Technical Program Manager for two major initiatives: rotating machinery (RM) and Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC), and as passionate as I am about simulation, I continued working in my previous role as the Senior CFD Developer.
What is your background?
I’m a civil engineer by training and have always been extremely interested in anything related to water — what behavior it exhibits in nature and how we can use this tremendous power to our benefit without harming the environment itself.
I was born in Montenegro, a small coastal country in South-East Europe. This is where my enormous appreciation for nature comes from, as in my childhood we were able to reach the seaside (Adriatic Sea) and one of the highest mountains in the region (Durmitor, a part of the Dinaric Alps) within an hour of driving. As much as I love my country, I spent almost ⅔ of my life traveling and visiting some amazing places around the globe, until I finally decided to settle down in Munich, Germany after I finished my PhD (guess what, again related to water) and married.
What brought you to SimScale?
Before doing my PhD, which was a major endeavor in the world of academia, where I understood some different (theoretical) principles, and what could play a significant role in many particular flow patterns, I was working in the industry for the entire four years, solving the day-to-day problems in the engineering field. When I was looking for a new job, I had a strong urge to combine those two fields, i.e., to stay close to research and also have an impact on the lives of regular people and help them improve their living standards. This is exactly what I found within SimScale — constant innovation of what we are doing, life-long learning and development, and extremely supportive teams where everyone is motivated to give 110%.
What has been your biggest accomplishment at SimScale?
Besides the numerous career paths that we can choose from here, I’m delighted that I can follow my personal goals and develop certain skills that allow me to now communicate with a wider range of personalities, starting from the nerdy developers (as I once was and still am 🙂) to the extremely outwards-oriented product managers. This allows me to understand different points of view and combine exactly those elements that each party benefits from. In my opinion, working with people is the hardest work but also a huge privilege.
What are you proud of?
I would not use the word ‘proud’ as it implies only personal achievements, but rather extremely satisfied to have a chance to work with such intelligent people. While not everyone’s cause is to have an impact and move forward bit by bit, I have been lucky to be able to experience that and continuously contribute to it, as a part of my personal efforts or as a part of a larger SimScaler group.
What has been the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is to understand different cultures and how they shape us as individuals. As this is also my huge love, I gladly go in and explore the limits on purpose, although the results are not always pleasing or at least not expected. In the end, we can only come out smarter afterward.
What excites you?
It never stops exciting me to learn something new about the people and world around me — this is why I love traveling and exploring new horizons, from volcanic islands and black beaches, over Indonesian komodo varanas and Icelandic puffin birds, to extreme diving experiences and delicious food all over the world (it took me some tries to figure it out 🙂). When calm, I love reading a good book, learning new languages, or having deep, meaningful conversations with chosen people.
What makes you you?
This is always a difficult question to answer, but I guess my positive attitude towards life, never-ending motivation to do something meaningful, and strong moral principles that shape my sense of fairness and make people believe me and rely on what we shook hands about.
What do people value about you?
One more question that has no simple answer. I would rather hear other people talking about it. Yet, if I have to pick something then I guess it would be honesty, integrity, and endless curiosity. The last one might not always be welcoming at the beginning, but as I am one of the “why” persons and ask all kinds of different questions from the deepest place of honesty and curiosity, they also open up with time, which I appreciate a lot.
Thank you for sharing, Nevena!
Stay tuned for more insights into SimScale and see what the team has been up to on our @lifeatsimscale Instagram feed. Want to start your own SimScale story? Make sure to keep an eye on our careers page for possible openings!
