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Daniel Harryman - BrightSparks Class of 2017 Award Winner

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RS Components partnered with Electronics Weekly on its inaugural EW BrightSparks programme to celebrate the achievements of the UK’s most talented young electronics design engineers and help to inspire and encourage new entrants to the industry.

Since graduating university with a 1st class MEng Electronic Engineering degree, Daniel Harryman has been working for the Science and Technology Facilities Council designing electronic systems that acquire and analyse data from the ISIS neutron source particle accelerator. The electronic designs Daniel creates are for the beam instrumentation/ diagnostics department and they’re used to acquire parameters needed to tune the accelerator and keep it operational.

Despite having been in the role for little over a year, Daniel has already had a conference paper published for a radiation monitoring system he built using a special type of radiation-sensitive field-effect transistor. He also became one of approximately 100 Certified LabVIEW Architects in the UK, building on the experience gained in his placement year working at National Instruments. In addition, Daniel was a UK finalist at last year's IET ‘Present Around the World’ Competition.

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Like a number of our EW BrightSparks, Daniel’s passion for engineering was discovered fairly late on: “I tried some random subjects at A-levels but dropped out half way through, then sat back and thought about what I wanted to do with my life – what was I good at and what did I enjoy most? I have always been good at maths and physics so that led me to take an engineering course at college. It wasn’t until I decided to go to college and started studying engineering that I really began to love what I was doing and got motivated to study. From there I enrolled at University, and eventually went onto the job that I have now for a public sector research institute where I design instrumentation for particle accelerators.”

Promoting engineering

“I think there are a number of initiatives in the UK that are good at showcasing engineering, be it STEM clubs, code clubs and the like. There’s a huge network of STEM ambassadors who go out to schools and get people interested in not just engineering but all the sciences. I’m also quite heavily involved with First Lego League, so I coach a league team, getting them to programme Lego robots. These kids are 8 years old and you’ve got them programming and working out different logic statements. It’s so much fun I’m always jealous that I didn’t have these opportunities when I was a kid!”

Daniel has achieved some great things in his short work lifetime. The IET’s Present Around the World competition is on a huge worldwide scale, so being the UK finalist is a marvellous achievement! His story of having found his calling after discovering engineering is inspiring to others and his love of it is what will see him do great things in this industry.”

Isabella Mascarenhas, Young Professionals Engagement Manager, IET



As Daniel points out: “these days kids get introduced to electronics very early on with things like iPad’s and mobile phones, and I think that works in two ways: there will be a subset of people who are really fascinated in how these devices work, and they will want to go on to work in this sector. But, at the same time, the fact is that these new devices are harder to take apart and more complicated – it’s so much harder to figure out what’s going on inside. So I think another set of people will just accept that these devices work but won’t be interested in how. All in all, with the increase in STEM events and code clubs there are certainly a lot more opportunities for kids to get involved with electronics at a much earlier age. I didn’t start programming until I went to university, now we have 8-year-olds and younger programming and learning these skills.”

Find out more about EW BrightSparks...

DesignSpark Community Manager and all-around geek girl.
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