Following a successful round of interviews, we’re delighted to introduce our newest recruit – Prototype Engineer, James Nixon.
Having spent the last two years working at the Art and Design school at LJMU as a Digital Fabrication Technician, we’re delighted to welcome James to the Sensor City team and we look forward to seeing his valuable contribution play out within our laboratories.
His first job however, was to answer a series of quick fire questions…and here are his answers!
What attracted you to the job at Sensor City?
I’m a maker at heart so having the opportunity to professionally build stuff in a state-of-the-art workshop really appealed to me. I also liked the idea of the challenge of working on a wide range of projects with the companies working with Sensor City.
What’s your past work background?
I’ve been working in the maker movement since finishing University and progressed to working as a DT technician in a London secondary school. During that time, I also did a lot of freelance design work, mainly specialising in building replica movie props.
What’s your specialist area of expertise?
I mainly specialise is digital fabrication, designing parts for 3D printing, CNC milling and laser cutting. I am working on improving my electronics and programming skills as well, to be able to tackle all aspects of prototyping within Sensor City.
What’s the best project you’ve ever worked on?
I’ve done too many weird projects to have just one favourite. A couple of highlights include customized biodegradable coffins, an augmented reality seaside telescope and a full body 3D scanner and hologram viewer.
What expertise will you be bringing to Sensor City that will help our tenants and tech community?
As a Prototyping Engineer, I have the expertise to bring the ideas of our tenants and the tech community to life. Working with them, I can help them quickly go from idea to prototype in a short amount of time.
What developments in sensors/IoT applications do you forecast in the coming years?
With the development of long range, low power transmission, with technologies like LoRa, I think we’ll see large meshed networked groups of sensors being used in all sorts of applications.
And finally, what do you do in your spare time?
I spend my spare time making stuff, though I do more analogue stuff like woodworking, sculpting and model making.