Professor Ben Allen, head of the Centre for Wireless Research at the University of Bedfordshire, spoke to the school children at The Royal Institution, London, as part of the Royal Institution’s interactive Engineering Masterclass grand finale.

The Engineering Masterclass series is led by top experts from academia and industry and is aimed at inspiring talented young people from all around the UK toward becoming the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

Professor Ben Allen and research student Ivan Ivanov, gave the inspiring talk to the group of 13-14 year olds at the finale of their engineering masterclass. The duo talked about the FUNcube satellite, a 10cm³ satellite which orbits the earth once every 90 minutes.

Professor Ben Allen explained the background:

“The FUNcube satellite was built by radio amateurs at the National Radio Centre based at Bletchley Park. It carries on board an educational experiment relating to heat and was launched last November from the National Radio Centre. We demonstrated receiving radio signals from 'Funcube' live at the masterclass, which included information about the satellite’s on-board status and we had a greeting message sent to the children as it passed overhead”.

The FUNcube has a mass of less than 1kg and is the first spacecraft to have a primary mission of educational outreach to schools. It is the smallest ever satellite to carry a linear transponder for radio amateurs.

Professor Ben Allen is the Head of Centre for Wireless Research at the University of Bedfordshire.

As well as teaching on the University of Bedfordshire’s electronic engineering courses, he has also had his research in the area of wireless systems widely published. He has an established track record of wireless technology innovation that has been built up through collaboration between industry and academia. His research interests include wideband wireless systems, antennas, propagation, waveform design and energy harvesting.