Features

Five minutes with Stephane Marouani

In the PACE hot seat is Stephane Marouani, Country Manager, MathWorks Australia.

How did you come to be in this industry?
While studying Math and Physics as an undergrad student and not being sure where to go from there, I discovered that I was pretty good with computers and software development. Even better if I could travel the world and have fun at the same time.

What's the best business idea you have that you will never use?
I often come up with brilliant business ideas while sleeping. Unfortunately I don't remember them when I wake up. Also, a voice recognition system for my car or phone that would understand my accent would be useful these days.

What do you see are the biggest opportunities for our industry?
Australia is not able to compete on cheap manufacturing, especially within the region. But thanks to a great pool of engineering talent sourced from our education system or attracted from overseas, we have the opportunity to become a smart manufacturing leader and provide advanced solutions to the rest of the world.

At MathWorks one of our core aims is to familiarise these budding engineers with globally-used platforms like MATLAB so they can quickly get to building their expertise and track records.

What's the greatest challenge in your job?
This business requires a special breed of engineers who have a very deep technical expertise to be able to engage with our community.

While lots of engineers are fluent with platforms like MATLAB and Simulink, it's important for our staff to be able to convert technical solutions into benefits for our customers' bottom line. Finding those people is not easy, and I'm glad I have the best ones in my Australian team.

If you could be anything else, what would it be and why?
Growing up in the south of France, I had the chance to practice a lot of sports from skiing to windsurfing but never pursued one seriously.

At this stage the one hobby that I could still pursue perhaps, is to be a race car driver to fuel my passion for engineering and cars.

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