First female graduate from ISLI

Citation

(2006), "First female graduate from ISLI", Circuit World, Vol. 32 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2006.21732dab.005

First female graduate from ISLI

First female graduate from ISLI

Keywords: Electrical engineering, Research

As the first female student to enroll for the EngD programme at the Institute for System Level Integration in 2001, EngD Research Engineer, Jasmine Lam, became the ISLI's first female EngD graduate following a graduation ceremony at Glasgow University in July (Plate 2).

Plate 2 Jasmine Lam

Sponsored by QinetiQ, Jasmine's project, entitled High-level design tools for FPGA SoC, focused on developing a design methodology to make FPGAs accessible as an implementation platform for algorithm engineers working at a very high level of abstraction, e.g. directly from Matlab through to FPGA implementation. The prime application domains will be wireless communications and multimedia but the project will also investigate the application of these methods to other areas such as radar, sonar and medical image and signal processing.

Jasmine's viva voce exam, the final “defence” of her doctoral thesis in front of a panel of academic and industry specialists, took place in May. The panel was convened by Prof. David Cumming, University of Glasgow. The examiners were Dr Emmanueal Casseau of the French Institute Laboratoire d'Electronique des Systèmes TEmps Réel (LESTER) in Brittany, Prof. Donald Reay of Heriot- Watt University's Electronic Engineering Department and Andrew Parmley, Head of Discipline at Thales Optronics, Glasgow. Having successfully defended her thesis, the panel agreed that Jasmine should pass the viva without having to make any changes to her research work. This is extremely rare among EngD and other PhD-level theses. Normally, EngD students pass the viva exam subject to changes to their research findings that will satisfy the panel of examiners.

Jasmine's viva pass creates a double first – she is the first woman to graduate with the Engineering Doctorate in System Level Integration and also the first student, since the EngD programme launched in 1999, to pass her viva without having to make a single change to her research work.

Jasmine lives in Birmingham. After concentrating on the write up of her thesis, she will now be looking for a suitable job in the Midlands. For further information, please visit web site: www.sli-institute.ac.uk or contact Sian Williams, EngD Centre Manager, Tel: 01506 469312.

Founded in 1998, ISLI (the Institute for System Level Integration) provides postgraduate education, professional training and research in system level integration incorporating cross over technologies such as hardware, embedded software, MNT/MEMS.

A collaboration of the computing science, informatics and electronic engineering departments of the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde, and Scottish Enterprise, the Institute is the first centre of excellence in system level integration to be established worldwide. Its aim is to support the development of electronics systems design worldwide and to encourage the exploration of new technologies through research.

Web site: www.sli-institute.ac.uk, for general enquiries e-mail: sli@sli-institute.ac.uk