‘I have a working knowledge of the universe and everything it contains’

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As the submissions for the Sharp Laboratories of Europe internship begin to stack up we thought we would whet the appetites of those aspiring scientists with an interview with one of Sharp’s bright young graduates, Jacob Barrett.
Barrett won a place on Sharp Laboratories of Europe’s graduate scheme which he completed in 2011. Since then he has gone onto become a researcher at the labs and is currently working on one of Sharp’s green energy projects.
Humans Invent met up with Barrett to find out what he did on the graduate scheme, how his current research into renewable energy is progressing and what path he wants to take in the future.
How did you end up at Sharp Laboratories of Europe?
I studied physics at the University of Manchester from 2006-2010. I was then a bit unsure what I wanted to do with my life and I heard about Sharp Labs and thought, that is exactly what I want to do, seeing it as a way to continue my enthusiasm for scientific research as it sounded like they were doing some exciting things.
Are you a specialist or generalist?
I started on the graduate scheme which is where you do two month placements in each of the departments, this enables you to develop a broad understanding of the activities of the Lab and where you can best apply your knowledge and become a specialist. So you work on a specific project for two months, normally a problem that somebody has come up with. For example, for one of them, I was designing a little box to monitor how people use their TV remotes by recording all the signals that were coming in from them and logging this data so we could see what buttons people were pressing on their remotes.
From my degree, if anything, I’m a particle physicist, maybe an astrophysicist but I’ve always enjoyed the general aspect of being a physicist. In my interview with Sharp, I actually used a line from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory that Sheldon Cooper says after he is asked if he knows how something works: he says, “Of course I do, I’m a physicist, I have a working knowledge of the universe and everything it contains.”
What are you working on at the moment?
Currently I’m working on a project to improve the system efficiency of domestic PV installations.
Is renewable energy the area of research you want to stay in?
Yes, I find the energy field quite interesting because it is becoming more and more relevant both in terms of the public and political consciousness, what with the targets that have been set for 2020.
It is definitely something I enjoy working on because it is something that needs people to look at and find ways of actually meeting all these targets that the government said it will hit but is failing to do so at the moment.
Were you keen on science from a young age?
Yes I think I was, I used to have an electronics kit from which you could make various circuits. For example, you could make a water sensor which you could put on the edge of a cup or a bath and once the water reached it, the sensor would set off a little buzzer.
You could also build a little radio with it. It was a kit that was designed for use in America so it was technically illegal to build the radio and transmit from this little electronics kit. I built it but I was too scared to turn it on because I had this incredible fear that I’d be breaking the law.
Do you have any personal projects you do at home?
I’m more a fixer of things at the moment, so for example, when my projector broke quite recently, I had to very carefully take it apart, avoiding all the optics and clean out the system from the inside.
Being a scientist means I’m capable of taking things apart without breaking them and knowing my limits whereas most people would think, ‘oh I’m not going to take my phone apart because I will probably destroy it.’
But one of the things I look forward to later in life is when I can have my own workshop and build my own things.