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PhD student Kari Clark goes to Parliament!

Kari Clark, final year PhD Student supervised by TRANSNET Co-Investigator Zhixin Liu, is going to Parliament!

Kari will be presenting his engineering research to a range of politicians and a panel of expert judges, as part of STEM for BRITAIN on Wednesday 13th March.

Kari’s research poster on synchronising thousands of computers to within trillionths of a second through optical fibre to maximise the data processing capacity of future “Cloud” Data Centres will be judged against dozens of other scientists’ research in the only national competition of its kind.

Kari - based within the Optical Networks Group at  our UCL site - was shortlisted from hundreds of applicants to appear in Parliament.

On presenting his research, Kari said:

"I very much enjoy scientific communication, and STEM for BRITAIN is an exciting and unique opportunity to for me to present my “Cloud” data centre synchronisation research. This will be my first ever visit to Parliament, and I greatly look forward to the competition."

Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, said:

"This annual competition is an important date in the parliamentary calendar because it gives MPs an opportunity to speak to a wide range of the country’s best young researchers.These early career engineers, mathematicians and scientists are the architects of our future and STEM for BRITAIN is politicians’ best opportunity to meet them and understand their work.”

Kari’s research has been entered into the engineering session of the competition, which will end in a gold, silver and bronze prize-giving ceremony.

Judged by leading academics, the gold medalist receives £2,000, while silver and bronze receive £1,250 and £750 respectively.

The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee runs the event in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Biology, The Physiological Society and the Council for the Mathematical Sciences, with financial support from the Clay Mathematics Institute, United Kingdom Research and Innovation, Warwick Manufacturing Group, Society of Chemical Industry, the Nutrition Society, Institute of Biomedical Science, the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research and the Comino Foundation.