Engineering Careers Talk

On Thursday 14 March, Dr Ian Sandall came into Liverpool College to deliver a highly engaging talk to pupils in Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 who are interested in Engineering.

Dr Sandall is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, specialising in Electrical Engineering and Electronics. Dr Sandall started the talk by defining what was meant by Engineering. This was best depicted by quoting the Duke of Edinburgh: “Everything not put on Earth by God was made by an engineer.” He then revealed examples of how engineering impacts upon our everyday lives, ranging from light emitting diodes in children’s shoes, the use of thermal imaging to monitor babies temperature in incubators and chips within formula one cars and mobiles phones. Dr Sandall very effectively used the visual aid of bags of sugar to demonstrate the ever reducing side of transistor chips within modern technology and how this is impacting upon the size of devices and performance of modern technologies.

The impact of electrical engineering on a range of fields was also discussed, such as using plasma in antimicrobial resistance, adaptive optics to improve photography, autonomous cars, drone technology, virtual reality, robotics and the impact of grapheme in transistor design in increasing computational power, and how this impacts upon quantum mechanics.

Finally, Dr Sandall shared his own research using increasing the efficiency of optical based bio-sensing and diagnostic techniques to enhance the speed of blood work analysis in the medical field.

Our thanks to Dr Sandall for his incredibly interesting talk – it undoubtedly opened pupils’ eyes to the fascinating world of possibilities if they were to pursue a career in Engineering.

Mrs Doran

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