Background
I grew up in South East London, probably best known for its centre-screen appearance on the titles for Eastenders. Family holidays to the Lake District and Snowdonia were an opporunity to relate to the post-glacial geography otherwise only seen in school textbooks, while playing with LEGO Mindstorms was probably my first delve into 'electronics'.
After starting to climb at Mile End Climing Wall at the age of 11 and exploring the Southern Sandstone crags in Sussex, I was hooked. Learning to trad climb at Stanage opened the door wider to rock climbing in the UK and a place on the Jonathan Conville Memorial Trust course in Chamonix gave me a chance to try my hand at Alpine mountaineering in 2016.
A return trip to the Mer-de-Glace glacier in 2017 was my first experience of seeing the extent of the glacier's retreat, after which I began to look into how I could turn my engineering studies towards glaciology. At the RGS IBG Explore conference in November that year I attended the polar expeditions workshop and have been looking for electronic engineering problems within glaciology since then.
HF ApRES
The research question behind my PhD project at UCL is to explore the feasibility of a high-frequency (HF) version of the ApRES radar for use in synthetic aperture radar imagery. The ApRES was developed in collaboration between University College London and the British Antarctic Survey as a VHF/UHF phase-sensitive radar to monitor basal melt-rates on ice sheets with millimeter precision [1].
The motivation behind reducing the operating bandwidth of the ApRES stems from the relationship between radar sample spacing and wavelength - the shorter the wavelength, the shorter the spacing. A radar with a larger wavelength requires fewer samples to cover the same distance, at the cost of reduced vertical resolution. Initial work has been developing and testing novel wire-mesh antennas, suitable for deployment in polar and Alpine regions, development of the signal processing necessary to generate imagery of the basal interface of an ice shelf and the development of a two-dimensional simulation tool to enable forward modelling of the ApRES in various environments.
If you are interested in any of the above, feel free to get in touch to discuss more using the contact details at the bottom of the page.
Publications
- Design of an HF-VHF Ice Penetrating Synthetic Aperture Radar, Hawkins et al., 2020
- Towards a Field-Ready HF-VHF Ground-Based Ice Penetrating Synthetic Aperture Radar: Forward Modelling and Validation for SAR Imaging, Hawkins et al., 2020
- HF Wire-Mesh Dipole Antennas for Broadband Ice-Penetrating Radar, Hawkins et al., 2020
Education
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PhD Electronic & Electrical Engineering,
University College London, 2018 - 2023 - MEng Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
University of Bristol, 2014 - 2018 -
International Baccalaureate,
Dartford Grammar School, 2016-2018
Teaching
I currently work or have worked as a teaching assistant on the following laboratory courses in the Electronic & Electrical Engineering department at UCL. This has included the development of course materials for students in addition to supporting the delivery of face-to-face and online sessions.
- IEP Engineering Challenges (SPGTA)
- First Year Electronics Laboratory (PGTA)
- Realtime Audio Descrambler Scenario (PGTA)
- Perfect Espresso Maker Scenario (PGTA)
In 2021, I was awarded a UCL Education Award for my contribution to departmental teaching as a PGTA.