John McClean, new Electrical Engineering PhD student awarded Val O'Donoghue Scholarship

John McClean joined the Department towards the end of last year as PhD student in the Optical and Semiconductor Devices group, supervised by Professor Tom Pike.  He has been awarded the Val O'Donoghue Scholarship. The scholarship was created by Mrs Maria O’Donoghue in memory of her husband, an electronics engineer, successful entrepreneur and technical author with strong links to Imperial College.

The award is for a British or Irish student, studying in the area of Optical and Semiconductor Devices, and covers full tuition fees and a contribution of maintenance for up to four years.

John says “I would like to sincerely thank the department for offering me the Val O'Donoghue Scholarship. What originally got me interested in physics and engineering was spaceflight, and Imperial's involvement in pioneering missions, such as InSight, provides a great opportunity for me to contribute. I plan to put the scholarship to use in the development of Imperial's position in spacecraft instrumentation. Before arriving here, I worked in the aerospace sector at Rolls-Royce and the European Space Agency, and studied physics at the University of Oxford.”

We wish John the best of luck with his PhD.

 Find out more about the Scholarship.