Meet Danielle George

Danielle is a professor of Microwave Engineering and Vice Dean in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Manchester. Danielle’s research is dedicated to solving one the 14 world engineering grand challenges of the 21st century; engineering the tools for scientific discovery. She has a PhD in Electronic Engineering and is Deputy President and on the Board of Trustees of the IET. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire and the Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke in 2016, the Harold Hartley Medal in 2017 and the Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal in 2018.

Danielle has contributed to the design and development of some of the most sensitive instruments ever produced for radio astronomy, and her research interests have recently expanded into communications in aerospace and wireless sensor networks. She has delivered a number of TED talks and appeared on various BBC documentaries, including alongside Professor Stephen Hawking.

Find out more about Danielle in the profile below:

1. Who inspired you get into Electronics? Was it a teacher, someone on TV or even a parent or relation?

I think it was my parents’ willingness to always be ready to find out answers with me when I always asked “Why?”.

2. How would you explain to young people what Electronics is and its importance?

For me Electronics is putting my Maths and Physics to work; making electrical circuits to solve the engineering grand challenges and change the world.

3. What is the best thing about your job?

Every day is different and you’re never sure what you’ll get asked!

4. What is exciting about Electronics at the moment?

So many things! For me it is about miniaturizing circuits and pushing the frequency high and higher. Imagine where you could put nano-scale sized circuits?!

5. Looking into your crystal ball, what is the next big trend for technology?

I think the medical sector is very interesting. Combining electronics with wireless technology, and making it all low cost, you could create diagnosis tools for every single person around the world. Sending electronic instruments/machines to places where you might not want to send a human is also very interesting (disaster zones, terrorist zones…). And of course my passion of using electronics to solve one of the 14 world engineering grand challenges: engineering the tools of scientific discovery. We are changing what we know about this world and the next thanks, to a large extent, to electronics.

Follow Danielle on Twitter @EngineerDG and watch her 2016 TED talk, ‘We are all born scientists’, here: