Student Success at European Electronics Industry Awards
Simon Brown, an EngD student, of the Institute for System Level Integration (iSLI), has won “Student Engineer of the Year” at the European Electronics Industry Awards. This is the third year in a row this award has been won by an iSLI student, and two of the previous three winners have been supervised by staff within the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at Strathclyde. Simon was supervised by Dr James Irvine, Reader, in the research group, the Centre for Dynamic Intelligent Communications (CIDCOM).
The award is given to outstanding students in the electronics and software disciplines, and the recipient must demonstrate an exceptional combination of both technical knowledge and practical application of skills. Simon, pictured, received his award for his work with industry sponsor, Teledyne Defence Ltd, Shipley, on a ground-breaking radar threat warning receiver, which is an order of magnitude smaller, lighter and less power hungry that any other system on the market.
On receiving his award, Simon commented: “I am delighted and honoured to have been presented with this award. Full credit must go to my tutors. The guidance they have given me over the course of my time at the Institute has been invaluable, and in all honesty, I don’t think I would have enjoyed this level of success without their help and advice.”
Simon has also been working with the MoD Defence Scientific and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) on a new emitter identification algorithm and will be performing field trials in conjunction with DSTL to verify the overall system performance, and to build a deployable operational support tool to generate library information for the system.
Simon’s success continues the legacy established by previous winners – Carol Marsh (supervised by Professor John Soraghan of the Department) and Dr Nazish Aslam – who walked away with the Award in 2007 and 2008.
Founded in 1998 at the Alba Centre, Livingston, iSLI is the world’s first centre of excellence for postgraduate education and research in the methodology and applications of system-on-chip design, system level integration and related software and hardware technologies. The Institute is a unique academic collaborative venture between four of the UK’s leading universities: Edinburgh, Heriot Watt, Glasgow and Strathclyde, with links to the University of the West of Scotland and Lancaster University who bring key skills in the use of MEMS technology. Funding for iSLI is underpinned by Scottish Enterprise.