Name: Claudia Peter
Place of Birth: Romania
Date of Birth: 19 August, 1977
At TU/e: February 2002 - August 2004: OOTI - Master of Technological Design program for Software Technology.
Current position: Software project leader at FEI company in the Netherlands

What do you do now?
I’ve been working at FEI Company for almost eight years now, and I’m currently a software project leader. I have always been passionate about making software, even though now I am looking at it from a different perspective. I enjoy my work: I’m in a challenging, highly technical, multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural environment. That is exactly what you learn about and practice at OOTI. I was never driven by ‘where I want to be’, but rather by ‘what I want to do’, what feels good at a given moment. And it still feels good.

Was it difficult to find a job?
No. Actually, I think I have been extremely lucky in that respect. I graduated in a time of economic recession, but nevertheless after my first interview I was offered the job. And immediately after that I got a second job offer, so I was spoilt for choice. In both cases, the fact that I was an OOTI graduate was an important advantage. When I noticed my first job was not providing me with enough learning experience, I decided to start searching for a next suitable employee. Again I was met with ‘bad luck’: I didn’t get a chance to search properly, as the first company I had an interview offered me a job, and that’s the company I still work at today.

How do you reflect on your time at TU/e?
I originally studied Computer Science at the Technical University of Bucharest, Romania. In my fifth year, I received a four-month Socrates Scholarship to finish my graduation project at the Université de Valenciennes in Northern France. During this period, I visited Eindhoven and met several other TU/e students, including my husband. It was a coincidence that I got to know TU/e, but once I heard about the OOTI program, I knew that was what I wanted to do after graduating.

My two years at TU/e were tough but very nice. It was hard work, and especially challenging conerning the less technical aspects of the study. At OOTI, working in a very diverse multicultural environment, and doing many soft skill trainings, is what makes you a different person in the end. I invested two years in OOTI, but it yielded two years of intensive training and experience you can only ‘pick up on the go’ in any other regular job.

What advice do you have for current students?
Enjoy your time at university and take advantage of the opportunities you are being presented with. No matter where you want to live and work, it will make you a richer person with the knowledge you will have gained afterwards. And ‘rich’ people just find the best opportunities.