My role involves both characterisation and experimentation work to enable Covesion to deliver novel and innovative PPLN devices for commercial production. My primary responsibility is for the Optical Characterisation Facility, but I also support the packaging of the PPLN crystals using internal resources and with our processing partners.

Credentials / main areas of expertise

I have an MPhys Physics degree from Cardiff University which was a four-year course designed to give you a broad understanding of both theoretical and experimental physics as well as gaining a wide range of mathematical and computational skills. As part of the course I completed a placement year at National Instruments which is where I gained an initial understanding of data acquisition and instrument control. My first position after University was at QinetiQ on their graduate scheme, where I progressed to the role of Associate Scientist in the High Energy Lasers Team. My role focussed on interfacing hardware with LabVIEW for data acquisition and instrument control in complex optical experiments. Before I started at Covesion I was studying photonics at the University of Southampton so I have quite a broad skill set which is useful to the role having worked on optical experiments both while at QinetiQ and at The University of Southampton. I have the background to get involved in the experiments and the ability to automate them with regards to the programming and instrumentation.

Favourite part of your job

I like the programming element of my job because I enjoy simplifying difficult or time-consuming processes into something that is more elegant and streamlined. A lot of what I concentrate on is automating processes that are done manually currently. For example, a lot of manual testing and data entry done by users in the lab can be simplified. The information can be pulled from the various pieces of equipment using software, but someone needs to design that. I quite enjoy it because it is very rewarding to see the process efficiencies you can create.

Career highlight so far

As a graduate at QinetiQ you typically do departmental rotations to see where you are most suited and to get a complete idea of what the business does because it’s such a large company. I was initially placed in the High Energy Laser Team and ended up not doing any rotations. While working for the team, I was tasked with streamlining an existing piece of equipment in terms of how it worked; I was able to make it run a lot faster and greatly improve its efficiency. Being a physicist, I wanted to learn about the science of what I was doing.  Due to my interest and ability in programming, I was promoted to Lead Programmer for an instrument control and data acquisition system that was part of a high-profile £30 million project. I really enjoyed being part of the team I worked with at QinetiQ and am very proud of what we achieved while I was there.

Personal background

I grew up in a village called Drayton in Oxfordshire which is near the Harwell Science Centre which includes RAL, ESA, RAL Space and the Diamond Light Synchrotron and some other big science centres. A lot were built around the time I was going through school and had quite a high profile in the local area. It was quite interesting because the local schools were able to arrange tours of the sites and laboratories. I think this may have steered me a little, but I wouldn’t have said it was my main driver for pursuing science. I have always been a ‘how does this work’ kind of person. I suppose Physics was playing to my strengths, to what I was naturally good at. I had a couple of very good teachers at secondary school who were quite enigmatic about the subject as well as being very good communicators. I think physics is the easiest way to broadly describe many things in the world, it is the biggest catch-all science. In hindsight if different things had been taught at my school I think I would have ended up being a computer scientist or perhaps an engineer. My career is perhaps also thanks to some strange inspiration from the Sci-fi world! When I was about fifteen years old the new iteration of Dr Who was on television and I was very into that at the time.

Interests outside of work

Outside of work I spend most of my time rock climbing, training for rock climbing, hiking and cycling. I particularly enjoyed climbing in Mallorca and Tenerife although I think my favourite climbing location to date was Red Rock in Nevada. I have only been climbing for a couple of years, since I moved to Southampton really, but I quickly have progressed to climbing grades which are nearing the top of the difficulty spectrum. Climbing has also been a big motivating factor for me to lose weight and over the last two years I have lost about a third of my body weight. I was inspired by wanting to climb more and better, it’s been great for me and my health and something I really enjoy.

Meet other members of our team

RongRong Xu

Head of Sales at Covesion

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Corin Gawith

CTO at Covesion

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