Meet the Team: Claudia Kaplan
Meet Claudia, a cherished member of MicroTau’s talented Engineering team. She began as an intern for the Manufacturing team and then moved to the Installation and Layout team as a Product Engineering Associate. She has recently been promoted to Technology Development Engineer - congratulations Claudia!
Tell us about your journey at MicroTau. What was your first role, and how did you get to where you are today?
I've been working at MicroTau for a year and a half. I first heard about MicroTau while I was at university and working on the Sunswift solar racing team. We actually reached out to MicroTau at the time to see if they'd be interested in making some riblets for our solar car to give us a competitive edge in races. Unfortunately, MicroTau had too much going on at the time (which I now know, having asked the team when I started working here), so we didn't get further with the collaboration.
In my last year at university, I worked as an intern for a big company. While the work and the experience was great, I found myself wanting to switch paths into the fast-paced startup world. I just so happened to receive a LinkedIn message from Rebecca asking me if I knew about MicroTau and if I was interested in learning more. Of course I had heard about MicroTau, and of course I said yes ... and the rest is history!
I was initially hired into the Manufacturing team, but was soon poached by Installation and Layout due to my aerospace studies and previous experience. I never expected myself to be in this role when I first started studying at university, but everyday I find myself excited to come to the office and I feel proud of my work when I leave.
What do you do in your spare time?
What spare time? Haha jokes :P. I spend time with my partner exploring the Sydney’s Inner West on the weekends, as we recently moved to the neighbourhood. I occasionally go back to university to continue working on my undergraduate thesis, which I have been attempting to transform into a manuscript for far too long to mention. I frequent One Playground in Marrickville, the best gym known to man. I hang out with friends and family, and love the occasional TV show binge and TikTok scroll.
Claudia with Senior Product Engineer Steven Cuciti in front of some old rust bucket
What's been most exciting to work on lately?
What's been most exciting is hard to say. Travelling to Florida was absolutely amazing, and managing a team of installers taught me so much.
Recently, I completed a secondment within the Technology Development team, wherein I spent a month searching for new riblet concepts with improved performance results for testing. I was then lucky enough to jet down to the University of Melbourne to pitch these concepts to the 'fluid mechanics masters' there, and learn some incredible things about the technology. The work I did during this secondment continues to be exciting, as I get to watch Dr Mitchell Quinn and the Technology Development team manufacture and test the designs I have made.
Tell us about the cool stuff you get to do as part of your role?
My main focus at work is designing the layout and installation plans for test assets. This means looking at the aircraft, looking at Raj's Computational Fluid Dynamics outputs, talking to the customer about what they want, and figuring out how to put it all together. I love it!
From the get-go, working for MicroTau has been wild. Three months into working here, I jetted off to Florida with my manager to do some patch retrieval on a US Air Force Base. I then spent three months over the rest of the year intermittently living in Florida working on our C-130J project. This was an incredible experience - crawling all over aircraft with people walking around the base in their army uniforms ... I'd never seen anything like it!
Our Installation & Layout team has grown substantially since I first joined, wherein it was solely myself and my manager Steven. We now have another associate and two interns, so we are able to get a lot more work done. Can't wait to watch our team continue to grow!
MicroTau installer installs prototype film on a C-130J according to Claudia’s designs
What's your crowning achievement at MicroTau?
I feel like there have been so many things to be excited about while working here. However, nothing quite beats the feeling of watching a team of installers work from your engineering drawings to assemble a complete riblet package on a C-130J aircraft in a layout that you designed from your desk on the other side of the world. I actually felt tears in my eyes watching the aircraft fly for the first time.
