Profile
William McGenn
Curriculum Vitae
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Current Job:
Research Associate
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Employer:
The Unviersity of Manchester
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My Work
I design amplifiers for the receivers of radio telescopes
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Read more
Radio telescopes are just like ordinary (optical) telescopes, except that they are sensitive to radio waves instead of visible light. Because the radio signals that are coming from space are so tiny massive dishes need to be used in order to collect these signals, and then an amplifier needs to be used to make the collected signals bigger so that they can be processed by a computer.
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My Typical Day: Plenty of challenges!
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My job is full of challenges, from getting up in the morning (worst part of the day, I like to sleep!) to the engineering challenges associated with designing and building the amplifiers for radio telescopes to trying to understand what some of the other people in my lab are doing in their projects. The challenges are constantly changing and are very varied, which is why I enjoy this job so much.
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My Interview
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What's the best thing you've done in your career?
I stood inside the dish of the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank (a massive radio telescope in the UK), that was fun!
What or who inspired you to follow your career?
I have always enjoyed putting things together, taking them apart and trying to understand how things work, particularly electronic things!
What did you want to be after you left school?
an engineer
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
no idea, it would probably involve building things though – maybe making props for films, that would be a great job
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