June Focus on Women Engineers: Meet Marina Marinova

Meet Marina Marinova, Antenna Test and Calibration Engineer
1 June, 2023

Leading up to International Women in Engineering Day on 23rd June 2023, ALL.SPACE is celebrating its dynamic female engineers each week.

Other women engineer features:

• Meet Aishwarya Srikanthan, Electrical Engineer
• Meet Yamini Harikrishnan, Lead Requirements and CONOPS Manager
• Meet Maria Papaioannou, Director of Lens Antenna Engineering

For today’s spotlight, meet Marina Marinova, Antenna Test and Calibration Engineer. Based at our Reading, UK Engineering Campus, Marina plays a key role optimising the company’s revolutionary multi-orbit smart terminal. The Bulgarian native was recently nominated for a UK Women in Defence Award in the Innovation and Creativity category.

Role: My work is mostly focused on the bring-up, test and calibration of receive and transmit tri-lens modules, or TLMs, which are an integral part of our smart terminal. The TLMs are an assembly of a patch array PCB and a set of three lenses that form the core of our optical beamforming technology. Due to our unique architecture, we cannot use conventional methods to test and calibrate these components. Since I’ve joined ALL.SPACE, I’ve been working on designing, developing and optimising the testing and calibration of the Rx and Tx TLMs. That includes working closely with the Mechanical Team on the design and construction of the test systems and with Python engineers on defining, improving and optimising the test software for evaluation and calibration of the TLMs. As we are developing every test system (both hardware and software) inhouse, it means that it is an always evolving entity which makes every single day quite the adventure.

Time with ALL.SPACE: 3.5 years

Favourite Thing about ALL.SPACE

First and foremost is the incredible team we have. Working alongside such talented professionals and inspiring human beings is amazing. It creates the best environment for discussions and exchange of ideas, which, of course, leads to constant improvement and innovation. I often work with many different teams, from mechanical to procurement, which allows me to broaden my skill set and learn new things all the time.

Second is the work itself. There is never a dull day –the environment is super-fast paced and priorities can change often depending on different factors. Although it could be challenging at times, that’s what makes every day interesting to me. I have the freedom to grow and explore different solutions. It’s what gets me up with excitement every morning and helps me thrive.

Biggest Challenge and How it was Overcome

When you are working on something so innovative, challenges are an everyday occurrence. So it is quite difficult to pick the biggest one. But probably the most memorable one would be the first task I got when I joined, and that was to design and develop a new calibration method for the system. Our unique architecture makes it impossible to calibrate the terminal using the conventional methods which meant that we needed to come up with a different solution. Coming up with a new methodology, developing it and optimising it was definitely a team effort, but it was still quite a daunting task considering I was new to the high frequency satcom field and I was definitely not a programming pro. With the guidance and help of Richard Keeton (VP Chief Architect) and Massimo Candotti (Array Technical Lead), we managed to get a first version of our calibration software within a few months. I’ll never forget the feeling when we saw that very first automatically created beam in the chamber. It was a huge win for the team and definitely a memory that will stay with me forever. It is also a great example of the teamwork spirit in the company, something very rare.

Path to Engineering

During my school years, I was very interested in maths and physics, which led me to study engineering physics at university. My studies involved practical physics experiments, which started my love for testing, being involved with hardware and learning how things work. As for my telecommunications inclination, that’s the fault of one of my professors. He was one of the best professors/supervisors I’ve ever had. An extremely smart person and a very animated lecturer, he guided and helped nurture the engineer I am today. After my masters, it took me a few years to find the exact type of engineer I wanted to be: I prefer testing over antenna/board design and it took a few more years to find the place, ALL.SPACE, that would allow me to grow and expand my knowledge in what I love to do.

Hobbies

I prefer spending my free time reading, listening to music or watching movies. I also love baking, it’s one of my favourite ways to release frustration or get my spirits up andmost people at ALL.SPACE have been on the receiving end of some of my experiments.

Another way I release steam is by going to rock concerts. There is no better way to let off steam than dancing and singing until you lose your voice at a concert.

I also enjoy travelling. I love sightseeing and visiting new places, learning about different cultures and tasting different cuisines.