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Here, in our series on the latest EW BrightSparks of 2023, we highlight Jasmine Brittan, a student at the University of Warwick and a Sustainability Electronics Intern at ZF Automotive.
Achievement
As a general engineering student, Jasmine told us, she has taken every opportunity possible to help push herself to new limits in electronic engineering.
She has already been recognised, for example, as one of the top five young electronic engineers by the Royal Academy of Engineering Leaders Scholarship Scheme, by ZF Automotive as a UK Electronics Skills Foundation Scholar, as an IET Future Talent recipient, and winning UpReach’s Outstanding Achievement Award.
At university she worked hard to achieve top grades in her course, which led to the award of a first class degree. On top of this, one academic achievement stands out, she shared. This was her third year dissertation project entitled ‘TreeTruality: Building a Sensor System to Monitor Tree and Seedling Health on Reforestation Sites’.
For this, Jasmine built an independent sensor system using an Arduino, jumper cables, a fan to obtain representative air samples, a BME688, hygrometer and Adalogger. Problems she overcame primarily stemmed from the low processing power of the original Arduino Uno microcontroller. After much troubleshooting, she told us, the hardware was swapped for the respective Adalogger, to ensure the progression to the testing period was not delayed.
Following on from this, her hardware experience was further developed as a sensor experiments team member in the European Space Agency’s Fly a Rocket! Programme. This involved building and launching a sounding rocket at the Andøya Space Centre in Norway. Jasmine’s responsibilities involved building the pressure sensor, integrating this onto the payload plate, and writing Python code to compare elevation values derived from the accelerometer against those predicted by OpenRocket software.
A major error to rectify was the initial overestimation of the apogee by 896m, due to wave drag being neglected in the simulations. This was later implemented into the programme to obtain noteworthy conclusions for the scientific work. She subsequently presented the work as an ESA-sponsored student at the 4th SSEA and 25th ESA PAC conferences, in Barcelona and Biarritz respectively.
Jasmine has also immersed herself in a range of software engineering roles. Notable examples of this include two summer internships, at Accenture in web development, and Rolls Royce as an R2 Data Labs Artificial Intelligence Intern. Her specific role was writing the code to generate 1000s of augmented images of NGVs (nozzle guided vanes) in the aim of running these through the discriminator developed by her fellow interns.
Her team’s output at the end of the project was valued to be that of £5 billion, when rolled out across the organisation. An example issue that Jasmine overcame during the development of the code was the generator outputting images that were cropped in nature. Hence, as data was being lost from each image, she thought of implementing a 4 pixel wide border around each picture to gain more accurate classifications from the discriminator.
As a UKESF Scholar, her current internship at ZF Automotive pertains to both software and hardware skills. Jasmine’s allocated project is to develop a dual steer by wire proof of concept, aimed at application in driving schools and to allow 16-year-olds to complete virtual driving lessons.
She is currently working on the hardware and developing mechanisms which abide by a decided hierarchy. She will also be analysing the commercial viability of components by assessing the environmental footprint of each part in the Sphera software.
Finally, Jasmine has also taken part in extracurricular opportunities at university. Notably, she was part of the leadership team for the Warwick Boring team, who were selected as global finalists in Elon Musk’s Not-a-Boring Competition, which took place in 2023 in Austin, Texas.
As the Head of Fundraising, she was responsible for component purchasing and fundraising to pay for the shipment of the team’s tunnel boring machine across the Atlantic!
Electronics Industry ViewpointGavin Woodruff, Education Manager at the IET, also shared his viewpoint on Jasmine’s entry.
“It is truly inspiring to see how far Jasmine has come since Year 8 where her involvement in the IET’s Faraday Challenge sparked a sense of curiosity which has fuelled her career,” Gavin told us.
“Jasmine has clearly grasped every opportunity to develop her skills and understanding, applying innovative solutions to reforestation, space exploration, and inspiring the next generation of engineers.”
Community
Community engagement is also very important to Jasmine, and she has involved herself in a vast range of volunteering activities to help make a difference in the sector.
This began in the sixth form, when her A Level physics teacher introduced her to the Engineering Education Scheme, in which she worked in Rolls Royce to build a test rig to demonstrate the power required for electric flight. This experience, she told us, massively grew her confidence and led to her choosing to study engineering at university.
Another example includes serving as the President, Careers Director, and Outreach Coordinator for Warwick Engineering Society. This role involved working on a multitude of activities and setting the overall vision for the 30 strong executive team and 500 member society.
The range of work, Jasmine explained, included organising three flagship conferences, a career series of 12+ EngCafés, publishing a new edition of The Warwick Engineer magazine, releasing regular email and social media updates, winning the Bright Network Marketing Award, hosting a 200 attendee ball, and running wellbeing workshops for the society members.
Her tenure had a focus on increasing diversity in engineering. To this end, she liaised with sponsors to obtain four speakers for its “Borderless: Women in STEM” conference and she ran the inaugural edition of the ‘How to effectively prepare for an assessment centre’ session, in partnership with the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers.
Her advocacy for increased diversity in STEM resulted in her being nominated to become a baton bearer for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022.
Other outreach activities she has participated encompass being a representative on the Student Staff Liaison Committee, being a Faculty of SEM representative, working as a student ambassador for the School of Engineering, and also being a student blogger, in which she provided a unique insight into studying engineering for prospective students.
In this particular role, Jasmine wrote articles published to the Warwick website, on a bi-monthly basis, with topics including the various streams of engineering and the typical timetable of a first year undergraduate. Similarly, she has acted as a student ambassador for EqualEngineers participating in the mentoring of students, and written articles on how engineering institutions can better engage with young engineers.
Last summer, she decided to extend her outreach impact internationally. As a mathematics teacher with the Warwick in Africa programme, she spent six weeks at the under-resourced Cosmo City Secondary School in Johannesburg.
Her time each day, she told us, was spent teaching two GCSE-level maths lessons, assisting with grade 9 physics lessons, marking homework, and providing help at lunchtimes to provide extra support to the students. To expose students to electronics, she also tried to integrate key concepts into the maths lessons she taught, such as combining straight line graphs with VIR relations.
In addition, Jasmine spent time after school assisting with the robotics club, with the aim of enthusing more students towards a career in electronic engineering. As such, she engaged with improving the students’ soft skills, such as public speaking, and technical skills, such as Arduino programming.
She described this for us as “an incredible opportunity to see the students’ development and subsequent competition progression”.
Most recently, having just started an internship, Jasmine immediately involved myself in outreach at her UKESF sponsoring company, ZF Automotive, she told us.
“This is incredibly exciting as I’m developing an activity for school groups to build their very own brushless DC motor! I hope the impact of this project can too inspire more young girls to enter this male-dominated industry.”
Finally, recognising the range of work Jasmine has completed, her department awarded her this year the inaugural Student Personal Development Prize – for acting as a role model, encouraging participation and engagement. Excellent. “Such an award was an honour for me as this was chosen by the School of Engineering’s own staff.”
See also: Elektra Awards 2023 – The Winners
