Bob Tricklebank

Deputy Director - Engineering Integration

I joined the Institute as a founding member in January 2017 working out how the Institute would support Dyson’s talent needs and how we could develop exceptional multidisciplinary engineers to develop Dyson’s future products. I have been a key part of the leadership team through our first intake of students, their graduation, our registration as a higher education provider and successfully achieving New Degree Awarding Powers. I have worked across all areas of the Institute’s provision and am now the Deputy Director (Engineering Integration), responsible for admissions, communications, student support and the workplace experience of our students.

Prior to working at the Dyson Institute, I worked at Dyson as a structural analysis engineer, responsible for the mechanical robustness of Dyson products across all categories and developed into running a team of engineers. Whilst building and developing my engineering team I appreciated the freedom and encouragement provided at Dyson to prototype, test, explore, fail and improve designs. This is what draws talented engineers to Dyson, and provides a fantastic learning opportunity for students, interns and graduates.

Having had graduates join my engineering team I saw the benefit and development offered by integrating them with more experienced engineers and working together to solve multidisciplined engineering challenges. I enjoyed watching our graduates develop and move on to more challenging roles. The Dyson Institute provides an opportunity to allow students to work on these challenges and develop into great engineering problem solvers.

My experience at university was very academic with limited practical application. I learnt a great deal and had a great experience, but I struggled to understand why I was learning some of the engineering concepts that were taught. It wasn’t until I started working and saw the practical application that I understood why these concepts were important (at which point I had to relearn them). Combining the depth of academic learning with practical application allows our students to better understand the concepts they are taught, why they are important and to solve ever more challenging and important problems.