How I went from engineering summer school to designing solar chimneys

Growing up I was always interested in novel technical challenges. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I jumped at every chance to attend engineering summer schools and school trips. One of those was the Schools Aerospace Challenge where a team from my school was shortlisted for our design of a long endurance airship, giving us the opportunity to fly a plane and a helicopter. This is also how I first met Per Lindstrand, the inventor and explorer, who ran a company that specialised in creating brand new solutions for specific applications - exactly what I’d always been interested in.

Later on, when completing my undergraduate degree at Warwick, I remembered Per Lindstrand and Lindstrand Technologies. I needed to work during my holidays to earn money, and so decided to apply for work experience there. Per gave me responsibility for my own project designing and building a machine for testing the rate of helium permeation through fabrics. It fitted me perfectly – no such machine was commercially available, it was entirely novel. After one successful summer, I returned for Christmas and the following year.