#5 Interview With Jemimah Connie
Podcast ·This International Women’s Day special episode is an interview Dr. Jemimah Connie Akiror, an electrical engineer working at the Uganda Electricity Generation Company, Kampala.
She shares her diverse experiences in Uganda and Canada, from increasing generation capacity of hydro-generators to managing a broad range of electricity generation assets.
Show Notes
Dr Jemimah Connie Akiror (LinkedIn)
- Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL), Kampala: https://uegcl.com/
- Three parts of the electricity sector: Generation, Transmission, Distribution
- Education:
- Masters in Materials Engineering and PhD in Electrical Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada: https://www.concordia.ca/
- PhD Thesis: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/982361/
- Bachelors at Makarere University: https://www.mak.ac.ug/
- Hydro Quebec Research Institute (IREQ): https://www.hydroquebec.com/innovation/en/research-institute/
- Increasing generation capacity (power output and life) of hydro-generators
- Core-losses in ferromagnetic materials:
- “For a long time, it was assumed that the flux inside the transformer or electric machine is just pulsating flux. We found that there are some areas in the core where the flux is rotational. The formula for calculating core loss needed a tweak.”
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Asset Management:
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Planning for assets, managing risks, decisions on operations and maintenance, life cycle, sustainability.
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Asset management standards: PAS 55, ISO55000
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- Theory/Science-based vs Project/Applications-based approach to engineering education: Need a combination of both.
- Life-cycle costing of renewable energy systems
- “Everything that every researcher does is only a tiny bit of the big pie.”
- “There used to be an assumption that PhDs are for working in the university. But that is changing. Different companies are now embracing research as a good component of what they do, to improve the services they give.”
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Rewarding innovation at the organization level (at UEGCL) at the end of the year.
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“However simple or straight-forward the innovation could look like, as long as it has made people’s lives better, you are recognized for it.”
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Encouraged to participate in international conferences.
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- Companies, and society in general, could do a lot to support women in engineering. E.g. longer paid maternity leave, reduced working hours for nursing mothers.
- Uganda is one of the world leaders in hydro power. Hydel power plants can last a long time—50 to 100 years—if you take care of them.