1.When you were at Brighton College, what did you want to be when you ‘grew-up’?
At age 13, I wanted to study Electronic and Electrical Engineering to Ph.D. level
2.What are you now you've grown up?
A Doctor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
3.What is your best memory of school?
I was most proud of an anti-smoking campaign I ran in my final year - 1973
4.What was the best piece of advice you were given?
Derive from first principles.
5.What do you do /did you do as a career
After graduating, I became a railway engineer and continued with that until I retired at age 59 to create a small company dedicated to promoting electric and hydrogen powered vehicles for road and rail use.
6.What does your job involve?
It used to involve consultancy on major railway projects around the world, university teaching, research and development of national and European standards. Just before retirement it involved management of a team of 25 staff, - engineers and project managers. Now it is mainly concerned with consultancy in innovation and promotion of technology to reduce carbon emissions.
7.What are the most challenging parts of your job?
Finding enough time to do all the wonderfully exciting things that can be done.
8.What have you done that you are most proud of?
- Being a partner to the amazing mother of my four children,
- Being a father to my wonderful children,
- In the 1980s encouraging more women into electronic and electrical engineering,
- In 1992, resolving the loss of train service on the London Underground Central Line which occurred every day for a week starting at around 7am every day. It was a complex electrical fault which caused many protection systems to fail simultaneously - an event which had been predicted to occur once every thousand years but was happening daily that week.
- More recently, gaining the electric car record for Land’s End to John O’Groats and back again with my eldest son
- Cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats, raising money for The Alzheimer’s Society aged 60.
9.What is the single thing that would most improve the quality of your life?
A peaceful world
10.What are the three objects you would take with you to a desert island?
- Power generation utilising a solar cell
- A computer
- A satellite phone
11.How would you like to be remembered?
As an engineer with a conscience