Where are they now? – Matt Timmons-Brown, EW BrightSpark of 2017
by Alun WilliamsIn the lead up to our fourth annual EW BrightSparks programme, which remains open for entries until February 24, we’re continuing our series catching up with a few previous winners, to hear about their developments since being featured as a part of the programme.
Today, we feature Matt Timmons-Brown, who was a member of our initial EW BrightSparks cohort, back in 2017.
It was great to talk to Matt again and hear about the changes that have been happening.
We’re talking about going to university, writing a book, an internship with Huawei and the prospect of studying in the United States…
Edinburgh University
When we finished our writeup of Matt for EW BrightSparks 2017 he was anticipating going to university and said he was particularly interested in the intersection between computer science-based software and hardware…
Well, he is now into his second year, of four, as a Computer Science Undergraduate at The University of Edinburgh. He has completed an electronics module as part of the course, but now finds his focus more matched to the software and computer science element than the physics-based aspects of electronics.
Note that he is a Bill Tutte Memorial scholar through an annual bursary provided by the Bill Tutte Trust (he was a Bletchley Park WWII codebreaker) and current modules being studied in include the likes of Mathematical Reasoning, Computer Systems (Assembly/C), Software Engineering (Java) and Probability and Algorithms & Data Structures (Python).
Matt has also enjoyed taking part in many Hackathons and other events at the university, deploying his skills in Python, Java and C/C++.
Kawada bi-manual robotics
His interests have also increasingly turned towards robotics and 5G, and happily for Matt, Edinburgh is a world-leading centre for robotics research!
Specifically, there is the Robotics Lab, which is expertly run by the professor Dr Sethu Vijayakumar.
In this area, an important element of Matt’s time at Edinburgh involves his helping out as a Robotics Research Intern in the university’s the School of Informatics.
Working alongside researchers and PhD students in the School, which has to be managed around his course studies, he is responsible for things like setting up, configuring and creating demos for nine newly purchased Kawada bi-manual robotics platforms (pictured).
These are used in Masters/PhD teaching and research, in a brand new module, and Matt told us he felt privileged to have such access to cutting edge robotics technology. He has to get to master the various packages and installations necessary to employ the different devices – such as the Robot Operating System (ROS), Python, C++ and simulation software.
As an example of his work, he has created a vision-based greeting demo, where the robots use RGBD cameras to recognise and greet people with different movements.
Author author
Readers of our Gadget Master Blog may have clocked this particular post – Gadget Book: Learn Robotics with Raspberry Pi. The author was Matt, and the very well-received book was published by No Starch Press.
Basically, it’s a guide to robotics aiming to take readers from being inexperienced makers to robot builders in both a fun and affordable way.
It’s a full colour production with a nice clear layout and easy to follow steps, including sections on the underlying electronics, which is a nice touch. It uses Python 3 as the programming language.
I certainly found it a good read and it draws you into the building of the bot! There’s even Lego involved, if you wish, for the building of the chassis, and lots of clear detail on the Python libraries and coding involved.
The American publishers were happy with the first six months of sales, he told us, although both robotics and Raspberry Pi were niche than general subjects. He won’t yet, however, be retiring on the proceeds from sales!
He found it time consuming and an intensive experience (the initial draft was written in a compressed time period), he told us, but it was also very rewarding.
Seeds for the Future
Another interesting development it was good to hear from Matt involved internship.
At the time of EW BrightSparks 2017 he had worked as interned with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in 2015. Among other projects, he built and coded an educational computer science resource based around a fake spider-throwing contraption for children.
He had also worked as a Software Team Intern at ARM in 2015 (working for a month in a software R&D team alongside engineers and undergraduates).
Bringing things up to date, in 2019, his most recent internship was with Huawei – a company you may have read about recently! – and it seems David Cameron was the man to thank….
Apparently, the former Prime Minister had heavily suggested to the Chinese company that lots of students from China studied in the UK and more reciprocal arrangements could be made. The company’s Seeds of Change programme was born as a result.
It involved 50 of the top STEM students from across the UK being offered a chance of an all-expenses-paid, four-week internship in China
First, the group stayed in Beijing, where they studied Mandarin the city’s Language University and met a range of businesses, from local startups to international corporations (from Y Combinator ventures to BYD and Hyundai).
After this, the group travelled to Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, to see at first hand the company’s R&D facilities and Huawei P30 phone production lines (pictured).
Here they also enjoyed world-leading technical training in computer science and telecommunications. It was a trip that Matt really enjoyed and made the most of, he told us.
Raspberry Pi Guy
Matt was also known as the Raspberry Pi Guy, after his channel on YouTube, when we first met him for EW BrightSparks 2017.
Featuring a wide range computer science and electronics tutorials and projects based around the Raspberry Pi, it has now garnered around six million page views, with 67,000 subscribers, since it started in 2012.
In those days, particularly around 2013 he said, there was a huge demand for Raspberry Pi content that outstripped supply. Since then, of course, there is a wealth of content from around the world based on the devboard that came out of Cambridge, and Matt admits he has had to pull back on posting new content, due to time constraints and changes of focus.
Ivy League
So what lies in the near future? The exciting prospect is of a year’s study at University of Pennsylvania, which is a research university based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It’s termed as one of the “Ivy League”.
Historically, Edinburgh has had exchange links with this university and Matt was privileged to be nominated by Edinburgh for one of the places available on the exchange year programme.
Areas for study are expected to be computer systems and architectures, caching techniques and processor design.
Also, happily, the University of Pennsylvania has a strong focus on robotics within its School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Specifically, the programme will involve work in its “GRASP Lab”, which is described as one of the top robotics research centres in the world. A Master’s degree for example is described as follows:
“Penn Engineering’s ROBO master’s program educates students in the science and technology of robotics, vision, perception, control, automation, and machine learning. Our students hail from a variety of engineering, scientific, and mathematical backgrounds, united by a passion for robots and a desire to advance robotic technologies to benefit humanity. Our program provides an ideal foundation for jobs in a variety of industries including robotics, aerospace, automotive, industrial automation and defense; it also provides a solid basis for further graduate studies.”
Matt is looking forward to the marvellous opportunities the American university will bring.
We wish him all the best, and continued success!
EW BrightSparks 2020 Associate Supporters
