Felix Cox graduated from Queen Mary with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and now works as a Mechanical Engineer in the Data Centre at AECOM, a multinational infrastructure company. He speaks to us about his work reducing waste heat, memories of Formula Student, and jazz…
Felix Cox poses proudly on site
My route to engineering
"I took a fairly unconventional route into engineering. At 18, I chose a jazz clarinet scholarship at Trinity College over Mathematics at Manchester University. Throughout this period, I continued to nourish my interest in physical problem-solving and mathematics. After a few years as a musician and instrumental teacher, I retrained for A-Levels in physics and maths, earning a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Queen Mary University of London in 2015.
I have managed to maintain a fairly busy gigging schedule, playing jazz at various clubs and bars around London on a regular basis over the last few years. I find it really helps me to have this creative outlet alongside my engineering life."
I loved studying in such a rich and diverse cohort of talented students
Memories of Queen Mary
"I loved studying in such a rich and diverse cohort of talented students at Queen Mary - I have always cherished how I was able to immerse myself in the myriad cultures and different perspectives during my time there.
If I had to pick a specific standout moment, it would probably be from my time in the Formula Student team. After many months of failing to get the Honda CBR600 engine we used in our car up-and-running, and after many tweaks, it finally spluttered to life. The team let out a huge cheer and we ended up being the first Queen Mary team in 20 years to make it to Silverstone.
I always valued the breadth of the course at Queen Mary. I loved the module I studied on vector calculus which was brilliantly taught by Henri Huijberts and which lit a bit of a flame in me in terms of visualising and conceptualising some very elegant mathematical concepts.
The course touched on many of the fundamental areas of engineering which I use in my role designing resilient cooling systems for data centres – heat exchange, fluid flow and computational fluid dynamics, rotodynamic machinery, and control systems – to name a few! I now design full systems, joining all of the composite parts into a coherent and efficient whole."
Felix Cox playing jazz clarinet - his other passion.
My advice to someone wanting to get into Mechanical Engineering
"Have an eye on the extra-curriculars - things which will set you apart as a job applicant, like Formula Student, engagement with engineering bodies outside of university (iMechE, CIBSE, Royal Academy of Engineering all run loads of great events you can attend for free). I also volunteered to tutor maths with TeamUp during my time at Queen Mary."
Witnessing my engineering designs being installed and commissioned is very satisfying.
My proudest achievements
"In my role today, I have had the opportunity to travel extensively around Europe, including to Madrid, Helsinki, Venice, Frankfurt and Dublin, for projects I have worked on and for factory witness tests. My favourite part of the job is being onsite. Witnessing my engineering designs being installed and commissioned is very satisfying.
I am particularly proud of a project I’ve worked on over the past two years, on a large campus of data centres in Finland. We worked with the local district heat network provider to design a cutting-edge and innovative project which repurposes low-grade and low-carbon heat from our data centre, to provide heating and hot water to the local community.
It is estimated that the data centre waste heat recovery scheme will reduce carbon emissions by up to 400,000 tons of CO2 per year – the largest single waste heat recovery system by a hyperscale provider in Europe."