Rebecca Prestidge

Meet Rebecca, Graduate Research Engineer working in our Robotics team. Rebecca started her journey at CFMS as an Intern before returning to CFMS as a Graduate.

I joined CFMS as an engineering intern in September 2023, between my second and third years of university, as a part of my year in industry placement. After graduating from the University of Sheffield in 2025, I rejoined as a Graduate Research Engineer. I was initially interested in working for CFMS after hearing about the company’s partnership with Space West, as during university I was interested in space robotics. I decided to come back after graduating because I enjoyed both the projects I worked on and the general environment.

My first project as an intern was on CoSInC and involved modelling concessions that occur during composite manufacturing, and assessing the impact of these on a part’s mechanical properties to better inform manufacturing decisions. As part of this project, I developed my programming skills as well as my understanding of meshing and simulation techniques. This was also my first experience of using High Performance Compute, enabling me to run large simulations in parallel.

Since returning to CFMS, I have been working in the Robotics team, where I have been using and developing our Robotics simulation tool LARS Sim. While working within the Robotics team, I have had the opportunity to work more closely with project clients and manage my own work packages.

My role also now includes working with our Robotics hardware to help validate simulated robot behaviour within LARS Sim, which I have also found really interesting. As part of the Robotics team, I have also developed new skills such as the ability to use both Robot Operating System (ROS) and Unreal Engine, as well as designing and executing validation tests using hardware.

During my internship, I really enjoyed working on the Timetable Optimisation for Extreme Weather Events (TOFEWE) project. iThis was the first project I participated in from the project’s start. It was really interesting to see how the project evolved from a concept to a fully implemented solution. As a part of the project, we worked with Train Operating Companies (TOCs) to better understand their workflows and where the tool could deliver value and it was really rewarding to see the tool completed and integrated into their processes upon the project’s completion. The TOFEWE project was also my first time contributing to work packages as a part of a team, rather than independently, and I feel I was able to learn a lot from this experience.