How to hack your home with Ri Christmas lecturer Danielle George

We catch up with this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer Danielle George to find out what she has in store for budding young scientists, and what she’ll be doing over the festive period. Congratulations on being named this year’s Ri Christmas Lecturer – what was your response when asked? When I first received an email asking if I might be interested in presenting the lectures I thought it must have been sent to me by mistake so I ignored it. But then I received a second email a few days later which convinced me that maybe it really was a genuine request and not spam after all! After I submitted my proposal and did a screen test, I became glued to my mobile for days hoping to receive a call with good news. I was over the moon when I found out I had been chosen! Now that the preparation is well underway I am getting even more excited. Michael Faraday’s findings in the field of electromagnetism nearly 200 years ago are integral to my field of work today, so I’m honoured to have the opportunity to present in the very same lecture theatre he stood in and to demonstrate how his discoveries are still of fundamental importance to the cutting-edge research taking place in engineering today. You’re going to be speaking to a room-full of the next generation of scientists – does this feel like a huge responsibility? HUGE! And I’m relishing the thought of it. It’s a fabulous opportunity to influence the next generation of scientists and engineers. I teach 200 first year undergraduates every year so I’m hoping that will prepare me a little. Are you nervous? I am nervous but it’s a good type. The type I normally feel before giving each lecture at work. I think it’s a healthy feeling and shows that you are passionate and care about the outcome. If I ever stop feeling it then I know it’s time to give up lecturing. I’m getting as much advice as possible from previous Christmas Lecturers to see the best way to prepare and I’ll try my usual preparation of hot chocolate before a lecture. The series is titled Sparks will fly: How to hack your home – can you tell us what we have to look forward to? In Sparks will fly: how to hack your home, we will take three great British inventions – the light bulb which was developed by Geordie inventor Joseph Swan, the telephone by Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell and an electric motor which was first completed by the Royal Institution’s very own Michael Faraday in 1821 – and show viewers how to adapt, transform and ‘hack’ them to do extraordinary things. It’s tinkering for the 21st century, using the full array of cutting edge devices that we can lay our hands on: 3D printers, new materials, online collaboration and controlling devices through coding. I want to use the lectures to announce the new rules of invention. [caption id="attachment_40379" align="alignright" width="200"] Prof Danielle George Credit: Paul Wilkinson Photography Ltd.[/caption] What do you hope people will take away from the lectures? You can do, so go do. Today’s generation of young people are in a truly unique position. They have never been more equipped to be creative and innovative. I want young people to realise that that they have the power to change the world from their own bedroom, kitchen table or garden shed. If we all take control of the technology around us and think creatively, then solving some of the world’s greatest challenges is only a small step away. I believe everyone has the potential to be an inventor! I’m also excited by the opportunity to highlight to such a large audience how ingenious, creative and innovative engineering can be. I want to help change the perception some people have of the field - engineers don’t just fix things, they create things. I hope these lectures will encourage and inspire more young people to take up this exciting and challenging profession. Tell us about what you do at The University of Manchester. I am Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences and Professor of Radio Frequency working in the Microwave and Communications Systems research group. My first degree was in Astrophysics, followed by a Masters in Radio Astronomy at The Victoria University of Manchester and then a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering with UMIST. I was a Senior Electrical Engineer at Jodrell Bank Observatory until 2006 and then I took up a lectureship post in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. My research at involves designing, testing and constructing instrumentation used in radio frequency and microwave communications systems. What this means is that I help to design systems and devices that can transmit and receive huge volumes of information using radio waves, which is how mobile phones operate,  or the much shorter microwaves, which is how satellite and deep space communications work. Engineers in this field are always looking for ways to adapt and improve these systems and devices, for example, can they operate wirelessly? Can they operate efficiently over long periods with minimal energy expenditure? Can we make them more compact, lighter or cheaper to make? One of the things I love most about my research is the extraordinary variety of ways it can be applied to solve real life problems and challenges. For example, my speciality is working on ultra-low noise receivers for Space and Aerospace applications and I am the UK lead for amplifiers in the $1B astronomical instrument, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the $1B Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope. I’ve worked on highly sensitive instrumentation for NASA physicists searching for the fundamental answers to the universe but I’ve also worked with agriculturists to develop devices to accurately measure usage of one of the world’s most precious resources, water, and with Rolls Royce on its industrial gas turbine engines. And this is only scratching the surface of the potential this field of work holds for all industries! The other aspect of my job, and one I really enjoy, is teaching. I teach first year undergraduates and postgraduate students so the teaching style is very different. Postgraduate students are usually much more aligned to your research area and I regularly go “off piste” during lectures, talking about real-world applications of the subject area. Teaching first year undergraduates is a big responsibility, as they need to understand the fundamentals of the subject before embarking on their chosen path. This is where you can really get involved with the students in the laboratory and tinker with different experiments to help improve their understanding. I love being given the opportunity to inspire and influence students. Being able to engage 200 first year engineering students is always a great challenge – especially at 9am on a Monday morning! How will you be spending Christmas, and do you have any science-related traditions? Christmas is a big family time and we all gather in Newcastle for the festivities. I’m the middle of three sisters. My family always say I can turn any event into a science-related activity and Christmas is no different; from relating Christmas traditions to the pagan “Unconquered Sun” festival, to reminding everyone who invented light bulbs for our Christmas trees! For more information on Danielle’s lectures visit www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures or follow #xmaslectures on Twitter. Danielle can be found @EngineerDG  and the Royal Institution @Ri_Science. Past CHRISTMAS LECTURES are available to watch for free from anywhere in the world on the Ri Channel at http://richannel.org/christmas-lectures. Want to know more? The Heritage team at the Ri have kindly put these facts together for us.

• The Christmas Lectures were started to specifically tailor for ‘juveniles’ of those between the ages of 15-20.
• The original lectures in 1825 were to provide a set of 22 lectures on Natural Philosophy suited to a juvenile audience during the Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide recesses. From 1827 the Juvenile lectures were only given at Christmas.
• Michael Faraday gave 19 series of Christmas Lectures between 1827 and 1861.
• The 1840 series of Christmas Lectures was supposed to be undertaken by Faraday but he was taken ill and John Frederic Daniell had to step in at the last minute and give the lectures on ‘The First Principles of Franklinic Electricity’.
• The first Christmas Lectures to be published were Michael Faraday's lectures on the ‘Forces of Matter’ from 1859.
• The Christmas Lectures have taken place every year since 1825, apart from 1939-1942 when they were stopped during WWII when it was felt it to be too dangerous for children to come into central London due to the blitz.
• The Christmas Lecture have been continuously televised since Eric Laithwaite’s 1966-67 series entitled ‘The Engineer in.
• Animals have often featured in the Christmas Lectures, in fact 13 series of lectures have featured live animals including 1937 Julian Huxley’s series ‘Rare Animals and the Disappearance of Wild Life’ which featured a live lion called Max in the theatre.
• 6 Nobel Prize Winners have given Christmas Lecture series (Both the Bragg’s and Porter have undertaken multiple series)
• William Henry Bragg – Physics 1915
• William Lawrence Bragg – Physics 1915
• Archibald Vivian Hill – Medicine (or Physiology) 1921
• Max Perutz – Chemistry 1962
• George Porter – Chemistry 1967
• John Sulston – Medicine (or Physiology) 2002
• Only 3 people have given the series twice since 1945, Eric Laithwaite, George Porter and Charles Taylor.
• The 1958 series featured a different individual undertaking each of the 6 lectures - J.A. Ratcliffe, J.M. Stagg, R.L.F. Boyd, Graham Sutton, G.E.R. Deacon, G. de Q. Robin
• Only two Americans have undertaken the Christmas Lectures – 1968 Philip Morrison ‘Gulliver's Laws: The Physics of Large and Small’ and 1977 Carl Sagan ‘The Planets’
• Professor Christopher Zeeman gave the first ever lecture series on Mathematics in 1978 entitled ‘Mathematics into Pictures’.