This month our guest is Tom Sharp, group technician for the Optoelectronics research group here at the Department of Physics, where his day to day involves working closely with scientists to maintain and troubleshoot equipment and ensure a smooth running of the laboratories and facilities.

Tom was always drawn to mechanical work growing up, and joined the Cavendish through an apprenticeship 10 years ago. In that time his role has changed, evolving from working in the mechanical workshop to being in charge of producing and maintaining a whole group’s equipment.

As someone who has to solve problems on a daily basis, Tom works with the mindset that you can’t get brought down with failures - sometimes your first solution won’t work as you hoped, but it’s all about learning, improving and adapting to new situations and challenges. 

But how does one learn to work in such a fast-paced and unpredictable environment? And what’s it like to work so closely with researchers and play a crucial part in setting up the experiments that lead to ground-breaking discoveries? Stay tuned as we ask Tom all about this and more… 

A bit of jargon busting:

OE: Optoelectronics

SP: Semiconductor Physics

ME: Microelectronics

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Jump into the conversation:

[00:33] - Guests intro

[12:18] – In the news this month: Meet June Broomhead (Lindsey), the woman who contributed to the discovery of DNA's double-helix

[38:58] - Outro

Useful links:

• Visit the Optoelectronics research group website to learn more about their research.
• Read the original article about June Broomhead (Lindsey) this month’s news are based on (including the black & white photograph of the 1947 Researchers and Students group)
• Tom Sharp talked about his apprenticeship at the Cavendish in this video.
• To learn more about the Cavendish Laboratory, or if you are interested in joining us of studying with us, go to www.phy.cam.ac.uk 

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• If you like this episode, don’t forget to rate it and leave a review on your favourite podcast.
• Any comment about the podcast or question you would like to ask our physicists, email us at podcast@phy.cam.ac.uk or join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #PeopleDoingPhysics.

Episode credits:

Hosts: Simone Eizagirre Barker and Jacob Butler

News presenters: Vanessa Bismuth and Paolo Molignini

Producer: Chris Brock