Jelena’s journey to Chartered Engineer and beyond

There’s a tendency to think that academic careers follow a neat path – degree, PhD, postdoc, lectureship – but Jelena Brown’s route doesn’t fit that mould.

A PhD candidate in the Particles, Soft Solids and Surfaces Research Group, Jelena returned to Cambridge after five years in industry. During this time, she achieved Chartered Engineer (CEng) status which she sees as essential to how she now approaches research. And how she plans to one day teach.

Because for Jelena, the end goal has been consistent for a long time.

“I had a lot of encouragement at high school and, actually, one of the biggest influences for me was a teacher who had a PhD,” she explained. “It was unusual for a teacher to have a PhD – I really loved that teacher and she had such a positive influence. I think, if I look back, I decided quite early on that I wanted to be a teacher and I wanted to have a PhD too.”

Jelena grew up in Zagreb, Croatia, in a school with a strong international outlook, offering the International Baccalaureate at a time when that was far from standard.

“It gave me quite an international perspective,” she said. “So when it was time to choose a university, it felt natural to look elsewhere.”

She secured a full scholarship to Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where she spent four years, studying chemical engineering.

“I didn’t know what chemical engineering was before applying,” she said. “I just knew I wanted to be doing something with the sciences and something that brought together chemistry, maths and physics. And something that helped the planet.

“I became aware through a workshop on ice cream, and on how you can go from making it in your kitchen to manufacturing it for millions – the scale-up process – and I was so interested. It was the making-it-big bit that I wanted to know more about.

“It linked to the things I enjoyed and offered that ‘saving the world’ part too, as feeding the world in large numbers is critically important.”

After graduating, she returned to Europe. A fully funded master’s in Germany was on the table, but she chose Cambridge instead, joining the MPhil in Advanced Chemical Engineering in 2013 – funding it with a loan. “Cambridge called, and I came,” she explained.

It was during her Masters that the idea of working in industry took hold.

“My advisor at the time had worked in the pharmaceutical industry before coming back into academia”, she said. “It very quickly got in my head that this is what I wanted to do as well.”

She followed through on that instinct, joining DS Smith and spending five years in manufacturing, progressing from Graduate Management Trainee to Waste Development Projects Manager. Alongside this, she also worked towards Chartered Engineer status.

Chartered Engineer (CEng) status recognises engineers who have developed the skills, experience and professional judgement to work at a high level, typically after several years in industry.

For Jelena, it wasn’t just a milestone.

She said: “It was important to me to secure the qualification as a showcase of the hard work and knowledge I had acquired I also think it gives me status and a legitimacy in my field, and I think it helped me to secure my PhD offer.

“It has been so helpful to have industry experience among my peers in the research group. I think I have a different perspective and can offer practical, real-world challenges that people might face.

“I often ask ‘why’ as I’m used to having to justify why it’s useful and why it could help. I suppose I am more aware of the limitations of the research, and the budget constraints – the real world doesn’t always have the option to try things.”

That perspective shapes how she approaches research – focusing on what is realistic, what is scalable, and what might be useful beyond the lab. It also feeds directly into how she thinks about teaching.

“When I was at school, I wanted to save the world, that was my life goal. I suppose it still is really, but I’m maybe a little more realistic about how I can achieve that,” she said. “I still want to teach. I don’t think the life plan has changed that much, even if I have learned a lot – I still want to change the world, and I can do this by inspiring the next generation. As a Chartered Engineer with a PhD.”