Aaron Jordan
Graduate
Surveying
Graduate Aaron Jordan will always be grateful to his Mum for all the usual reasons, of course, but also for "talking me into spending a week working at a relative's survey firm in Year 12".
A day spent surveying Otago Harbour from a boat was enough to convince Aaron that this was the career for him.
Aaron graduated with honours from the University of Otago's School of Surveying in 2002 and was immediately employed by Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). One of the key attractions of surveying for Aaron was the guaranteed work. Qualified surveyors are in high demand worldwide; as Aaron says, "they just can't train them fast enough".
So Aaron is a little unusual amongst surveyors in that in 2004 he returned to the University of Otago to complete a Masters in Surveying - study funded by his employer LINZ, who needed his research into the effects of earthquakes on spatial data. Highlights of this research included conferences here and abroad, and "a really special five weeks in Antarctica".
In 2007 Aaron left for Switzerland, to begin work with Leica-Geosystems, a leading manufacturer of surveying equipment. Aaron is now a GPS Application Engineer, designing GPS systems that provide industry with location data accurate to centimetres and in some cases even millimetres.
But, he suggests, this may not be the last we see of him. Aaron has not ruled out returning to New Zealand, even to the University of Otago once more - he still has a hankering to complete a PhD.