Interview: Hannah Riedle, When technologies can actually catch up with our ideas

Hannah is a research associate at the Institute for Factory Automation and Production Systems of the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. She lives in Munich, where she also studied medical technologies at the faculty of mechanical engineering at the TU Munich. Her research concentrates on 3D printing of medical models and devices based on anatomical image data. Ms Riedle is our current Munich 3DHEALS Community Manager and will be a speaker as well as a hands-on instructor for our workshop at #3DHEALS2018.
Jenny: When was the first encounter you had with 3D printing? What was that experience like? What were you thinking at that moment?
Hannah: My first encounter with 3D printing was in a university, where at that time it was still called rapid prototyping. We all were very impressed with the sample, a little ball within another, brought to the lecture.
Jenny: What inspired you to start your journey/research in 3D printing (bio-fabrication/bio-printing)?
Hannah: 3D printing is a field with a lot of opportunities, a lot of new challenges and a lot to learn. It is exciting to work in a field, which is constantly growing, and changing.
Jenny: What motivates you the most for your work?
Hannah: The fact that a simple idea can still go a long way in 3D printing. We are sort of still at beginning of the technology, so there is still a wide range of new ideas out there when compared to traditional production processes.
Jenny: What do you think is (are) the biggest challenge(s) in 3D Printing/bio-printing? What do you think the potential solution(s) is (are)?
Hannah: I think the biggest challenges are to get software and hardware up to the level, that they allow us to realize the ideas that we already have now and for which we are only waiting for technology to catch up. But also to start thinking about the new ideas, we could already realize now, but have not thought about yet, because we were all surrounded by an educated for designs for conventional production processes.
Jenny: What advice would you give to a smart driven college student in the “real world”? What bad advice you heard should they ignore?
Hannah: The best time to learn a new skill/software/… is during a college project, because later on you, unfortunately, will not have as much time to focus as much on just a single task. So do not be afraid of choosing something new, because that is where you can still learn the most.
Jenny: What was/is the biggest risk you took in your career?
Hannah: I started a job in a different city to work on my first project on 3D printing in healthcare.