Ben Hanley is chair of the Opening up Photonics steering committee, in this role he interviewed Sophia Fox, an experienced Optical Engineer at EDR Medeso, about her journey from struggling with maths to a flourishing international career in Photonics! Read part one below.
I’m from quite a quite a poor background, I grew up in a council estate with my mum and my brother, so it was just us in quite a small house. It was quite unconventional but there was a lot of freedom.
My mum was a student and my whole family, were very good at English language, law, things like that. So, from an early age, I just assumed I was bad at maths.
Discovering Maths
At school I struggled with maths and needed extra time to understand things. We were divided into sets of ability, and I was at the bottom of all my sets right up until around about 14. Before then, I couldn’t even add up negative numbers, I just assumed I couldn’t do maths. One day I found a booklet on GCSE papers on the bus, and it had answers and solutions to maths problems, I took it home and looked at the answers and then I would work backwards from the answers, and I found out that I could do maths. It was a good feeling solving these problems, and it became an interest that I enjoyed. I switched from English languages subjects to maths and physics at school. I scraped into university; I just passed to get accepted onto an electrical engineering degree and then in university I blossomed. I’m a bit of a late bloomer and that’s where I really got into electrical engineering and the maths behind that. It was just really, fun. By the end I moved up to a master’s degree and got the Intel prize.
Step into the light
At the end of the degree I was on course for a PhD. I focused on LEDs for my PhD, and it was very fabrication based, and I didn’t like working in the lab. I was terrified of using the chemicals and had a phobia of practical things but I discovered that I liked being at the computer doing circuit diagrams and calculations, so during my PhD I switched to a simulation heavy PhD on modelling of LEDs. My PhD involved electromagnetic modelling of III-Nitride-based LEDs incorporating photonic crystal nanostructures, in addition to electrical and optical characterisation of these devices. I got my PhD which sort of accidentally led me to my job at Wave Optics afterwards modelling optical wave guides for AR applications.
When I got the job, I had to do a crash course in optical engineering to understand things more clearly. Doing optical engineering, we focus on the nano structures and that was quite fun. I was involved in one or two patents from that. Some of that was looking at old papers from the 60s and 70s on microwave electronics so it’s a lot of this photonic crystal stuff. I think it was already done with antennas back in the 60s and 70s. So yes, what we’ve referred to those to sort of look at more optimum nano structures for wave guides. Then I joined Facebook or Metta as they call themselves these days based in Cork in Ireland. With the focus on setting up accurate simulations of micro-LEDs which are challenging devices to model. Just when I was about to begin my role, COVID happened.
The right people and work style
Through COVID we worked purely remotely and that was when I discovered that I was extremely productive in this environment. So, this is a thing from school and from my jobs, I couldn’t really pay attention in the classroom or the office. This is one of the reasons I was quite a slow child and then during my degree I worked mostly from home. When I was studying for school, I would often forge sick notes and skip days at school and go to library to study instead.
I moved on to X Display so that way I managed to get back into electrical engineering a bit to sort of justify my student loan. I met a lot, very interesting and lovely people. That was the first time I worked in an efficient team and learnt a lot about drivers for ASICS, things like this and it was very good to get an overview of how displays work because before I had not been involved in what other teams did in terms of display production. I was sad to leave X Display but afterwards I worked at Porotech and back to micro-LEDs, specifically the use of porous material inside the LEDs. That was a challenge because there was absolutely no information about the devices at all, so I had to set up simulations with very limited knowledge which I managed to do. After a while the work became quite routine, it was just churning out results so then I joined EDR Medeso as an optical and photonics engineer, providing Technical Support, and I doubt I will ever complain about being bored again. I’m exposed to a massive range of applications from photonic integrated circuits, medical engineering to general lighting. The work is continually changing and is remote so I can focus very well.
