Biography - Dr. M.J Willis, BSc, PhD, MIEE CEng

I am one of the older people on the net, having been born in early 1964. So old I can remember when the Sinclair ZX80 was pretty neat, £100 and able to run a nuclear power station. I can't remember what I was doing when John Kennedy died, I am not that old. I do remember going to see the film 2001, when it first came out. I didn't understand it at all.

I was born in Whitehaven, Cumbria, (Note for USA readers - this is in England) and was brought up in the nice part of the Lake District. My favourite lake is Wastwater. I went to school in Gosforth and St Bees. Apart from the rain, the area where I grew up was idillic. In those days, it was safe for children to cycle all over the place. It still is, but the parents worry more. I had to cycle as there was no other means of getting about because the area is sparsely populated and friends would often live several miles away. Everywhere was open country with fields, fells, lakes and the beach. The sheep are not dangerous, unless they bore you to death, so exploring the countryside was a good way to pass the time. We went fall walking often on school trips so I have climbed most of the local peaks.It only rains half the time on the fells, every other hour.

After school, I went to University, at University College London. As all ex-UCL graduates know, this was, and still is, the best University in the UK. I enjoyed it very much and was fortunate to go up to University before the Conservatives did their worst to the system. That "woman" has a lot to answer for. London was a great place to be a student. There was always something to do and excellent public transport made it easy to get about. I lived in successive years in Camden, Wembley and Bloomsbury.

My family moved to Horwich, near Bolton, Lancs in the early 1980s and I lived there for a while too. I moved South in 1986 to the University of Surrey, where I stayed until moving to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1996.

I live in South Oxfordshire which is a nice area, that I would not be able to afford to move to now. I used to live in the North West of England, where it is nice too. It rains much less in Oxfordshire, but the cost of living is high.

By profession, I am an Electronics and RF Engineer. As in the UK an "Engineer" means someone with a spanner and an oily rag, I am employed as a research scientist. I have an Honours degree in Electronic Engineering. My doctorate is in satellite communications engineering. Specifically, Rain fade counter measures for small satellite earth terminals using the millimetre wavebands. I am also a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the IEE.

I am now working on terrestrial 28GHz and 42 GHz Local Multipoint Distribution Systems (LMDS) and a host of other things in radio wave propagation and systems engineering. Mostly broadband, though this includes Universal Mobile Telephone Service (UMTS) and personal communications systems like Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN). I understand how things like mobile phones and digital television work. Although this is a happening area, I am very poorly paid.

To any young person considering a career in scientific research - if you are good enough for science, you can do most other careers, for example finance. Forget science, or leave the country if you want to have a bright future. If you don't care about being poor, it is a great career.

My main hobby is amateur radio. I enjoy building equipment more than using it, so I am not very active on the air. I mainly go for VHF upwards, but I recently started on 10m as my site is not good for VHF. I also listen to music quite a bit. I have wide musical tastes, but not including anything naff. I like to ski as well, when I get the chance.