MSc - Some Comments from Former Students

 

We have a separate page with further comments from recent graduates.

Dimi Amarasinghe

Dimi was in the 2003-4 class, and joined us from Sri Lanka after successfully completing a BEng degree at the University of Bath.  She says of her time here

"I stayed in St-Andrews University for only four months. Although it was for such a short period of time, I found the university, and especially the physics department one of good standards. My time here has been really enjoyable. Learning has become fun again, like it was at school. The lecturers are friendly, love to chat with students and are always encouraging us to ask questions. I really feel that they want us to understand as much as they do. There have been many times when I've needed help in a subject or laboratory experiment and it surprises me how helpful everyone is, including the PhD students who act as demonstrators during our lab sessions.

St-Andrews is a small place, but that's the best part of it. Everything is within walking distance, which is great if you don't have a car! A walk down to the shop and your guaranteed to bump into someone you know. For a small town, this place is bubbling with people every night. It's a place of fun and joy hidden away from the rest of the world."

 

Chris Blake

The MSc course 2004-5 was a fantastic experience. The course content was challenging and well taught with a great balance between theoretical and practical work. The picture above shows me working on a small team project in optoelectronic design at St Andrews.  Both St. Andrews and Edinburgh are great places to live from a social perspective. The industrial placement at the National Physical Lab was a great feature of the course which allowed me to gain commercial experience and understand what a career in research would be like. When applying for jobs I found that the qualification was particularly attractive to employers.  I was offered places on research degree programmes and in the commercial sector.  I chose to take up a job with Canon-Europe on the sales and marketing European Graduate Scheme.  I will work in three different countries in Europe over the next two years, and am currently in Holland.

Richard Dunn

The MSc was a great opportunity to move into a research area that has broad application not only in consumer products like display technologies, but also towards grand challenges in healthcare, energy, the environment, and security. The course was very well balanced between teaching and practical skills, using very well equipped laboratories of which my personal favourite was setting up and using optical tweezers. The 3-month Industrial Project at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) was invaluable in my career development and gave an exciting opportunity to work on an emerging sensor technology in Healthcare.

The course led to further opportunities from the industrial project, firstly as an industrial doctorate on the Optics and Photonics Technologies EngD scheme and then through employment at STFC and into a healthcare spinout, Microvisk Ltd. I have no doubt that the MSc launched me into my career and would highly recommend the course to anyone.

 

 

Ian Ferguson

Ian joined the MSc course in 1984 with a BSc in physics, and did his project at GEC Boreham Wood investigating TEA pulsed carbon dioxide lasers. After PhD study in St Andrews, postdoc employment at Imperial College (London), and a research faculty position at Northwestern University (Illinois), he became research director at Emcore Corp. Emcore is a leading producer of semiconductor materials and devices for the optoelectronics and electronics industries. [Since the time of this statement, Ian has taken up a professorship at Georgia Institute of Technology, and then Head of Department at the University of North Carolina.]  Ian says of his time on the MSc course "It equipped me for a career in optoelectronics. I still stay in contact with many of my former classmates from the course, who have continued to work in this area."

 

William Handyside

I started the MSc course in 2009-10 immediately after graduating in Physics from the University of St Andrews. My final year project was based around ultrafast laser systems and made me realise I wanted to discover more about this field of physics. The MSc course was recommended by my supervisor and certainly did not disappoint! The course was very interesting and covered a great deal of photonics related material – challenging at times but very rewarding. I would highly recommend it for anyone who wished to pursue a career in this area. I especially enjoyed the industrial placement after the taught parts of the course. Working in industry for those three months was a very valuable experience as it gave a fresh perspective on many areas of work we had covered in the course from a more academic point of view. It really brought together a lot of things you had learned throughout the taught parts of the course from basic theory to laboratory techniques and transferable skills.
This is an excellent course for anyone who enjoys a challenge and wants to pursue a career in either industry or research and development in photonics and optoelectronics.
I am now working as a laser engineer with M Squared Lasers. I am involved in laser design and development with tasks starting from analysing customer requests and generating specifications for customised systems; to building the laser optically from scratch all the way to final test; and installing the laser system at the customers location. The MSc course definitely played a crucial part in being offered this position.

Michelle Leeks-Musselwhite

Michelle Leeks-Musselwhite is a Royal Air Force Engineering Officer, currently stationed at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, where she is Head of Electro-Optics in the Department of Specialist Ground Training.  Michelle completed the MSc course in 2001, the course having been chosen for her by the Royal Air Force as a pre-requisite for her current post. "Having completed my original Physics degree at Nottingham in 1990, I entered the world of aeronautical engineering for ten years.   Suddenly being chosen to go and undertake an MSc some ten years later was rather daunting but I thought it would be an interesting challenge.  I thoroughly enjoyed the course, probably all the more for having been away from academia for all those years.   I like to see myself as proof that anyone with the right background can undertake and enjoy this course, no matter how long they may have been out of higher education."

Arran Gillies

I joined the MSc in Photonics and Optoelectronic Devices in 2007, after completing a BSc (Hons) in Photonics and Lasers, at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. This turned out to be one of my favourite years of academic study.

Like any masters course, the study was intensive but the range of up-to-date technical lectures and labs were fascinating and this drove my enthusiasm to learn as much theory and practical skills as I could acquire. Also, the good relationships that I built with my classmates and lecturers made it a more comfortable and fun learning environment.

The course structure appealed to me; having just completed four consecutive years of study, it was refreshing to undergo shared study at two important photonics institutions. This also led to a greater diversity of study topics and resources. The last stage of the course consisted of a real research project in industry, allowing me to put into use the skills and knowledge that I had acquired over the past eight months. It also gave me a unique taste of what life working in industry would be like. This experience was both useful and rewarding, giving me reassurance that my efforts during the course had help provide me the basic tools needed to work effectively alongside professionals all across the photonics industry and academia.

Now working as a lead optical development engineer at an optical fibre sensor company called Silixa Ltd, I strongly regard my MSc as an important part of my career development.

 

Kate Sugden

Kate took the course in1990-1991 having spent a year in France after graduating in Physics from Birmingham University. After completing her project at Nortel Networks in Harlow and spending some time working at Heriot Watt University she went on the do a PhD in Fibre Bragg Gratings at Aston University.

The MSc was a great foundation for postgraduate study; it gave me a good understanding of optoelectronics before specialising further for my PhD. I enjoyed the course immensely and it helped me to progress far more quickly with my research.

Since then Kate has worked for AOFR in Australia and Oxford Fiber Optic Tools before co-founding Indigo Photonics in 2001. This company was bought by Insensys in August 2003 for its fibre Bragg grating sensing technology and Kate is now exploring further technology transfer opportunities at Aston University as well as working as a consultant. The DTI Photonics Website carries a feature article on Kate's input to one of their conferences.
http://www.photonics.org.uk/archive/gratings.php

 

Robert Thomson

Robert took the course in 2000-2001 straight after graduating in physics from Heriot-Watt University.  His project was with Kymata, and during this time he was offered and accepted a place in another recent startup photonics company in Scotland, TeraHertz Photonics.   Robert says  "The course has been excellent, giving me both the hands on and theoretical background required to enter into industry or a PhD with confidence. The standard of lecturing and support at St Andrews is outstanding with courses covering subjects relevant to today's photonics industry. After completing a degree in physics at Heriot Watt, the next choice was a daunting one; in retrospect I do not think I could have made a better decision.

The course has a well respected reputation in industry. This has allowed me to start work straight after my industrial placement.  One major advantage of the MSc course is the inclusion of the industrial placement. I worked at Kymata Ltd on the development of refractive index profiling of planar waveguides. The inclusion of the industrial placement allowed me to experience working on a team at the cutting edge of the photonics technology. The placement will allow me to enter my new job with confidence.   In short the MSc course was an excellent move, and I would recommend anyone interested in the photonics field to seriously consider the course."

Robbie Thomas

Robbie J. Thomas joined the course in 2001 after completing a first degree in Electronics & Communications Engineering and after an eight-year technical sales career in India and the Middle East. He made a career-break in 2001 aiming to acquire a masters degree specialising in a field that complemented his first degree and one that had relevance in modern industry. After completion of the course in 2002, Robbie joined Edinburgh Instruments Ltd as a sales engineer in their Lasers & Electro-Optics dept. He has recently progressed into a sales management and operations role within the company, and was back in St Andrews to deliver an "industrial lecture" to the current MSc class. He says
The time during this Masters course was a very pleasant and enjoyable one, in spite of the challenges of the course mainly due to the several years' gap in studies after the first degree. The course gave me invaluable insight, knowledge and understanding of the optoelectronics industry and helped in securing employment as well as progressing in it. It was a real privilege to be able to study at leading institutions and for having the industrial placement at Sharp Laboratories. I am now certainly better placed in my career with this postgraduate degree.

Christina Wang

I was raised in China, in Hubei Province and completed my undergraduate degree at the East China Normal University (in Shanghai) receiving a BEng in Electronic Science & Technology in 2007. Then I came to Scotland for the MSc in Photonics and Optoelectronic Devices. In the beginning I found the course challenging due to the very different language and environment. However, I soon overcame these difficulties and enjoyed my one-year study very much, especially the laboratory courses which covered a great range of equipment in both electronics and optics. With the benefit of a joint degree from both the University of St Andrews and Heriot-Watt University, I also had the opportunity to experience two beautiful places within the United Kingdom.

In September 2008 I joined the Organic Semiconductor Optoelectronics group at the University of St Andrews to start a PhD under the supervision of Dr Graham Turnbull and Prof. Ifor Samuel (both actively involved within the POED Masters programme). My current research interests are in the development of hybrid optoelectronics, by combining both organic semiconductor lasers with inorganic CMOS based electronic control circuitry and gallium nitride micro-LEDs. I would say that the one-year taught MSc course was a perfect transition from a general broad undergraduate degree to a focused research based PhD.

 

Last updated 17.1.12  BDS