Aidan Duggan

In the past I studied artificial intelligence, and even further back I started in mechanical engineering. The mechanical engineering degree branched in towards software. I worked for up to 20 years in different aspects of software development software. I needed a change and artificial intelligence was sort of flavour of the month for the last couple of years so I went back to college myself and did a masters in artificial intelligence, which I finished last year and had the option of getting a job at that stage but I decided I would take it one step further and pursue a PhD on the use of artificial intelligence in space specifically within satellite.

A typical day for Aidan:

Every day is a little bit different, but I spend four or five hours each week supervising computer science students when they do their labs, because of the Covid situation it’s all online, I’ll have a zoom call where I will have maybe 10 or 15 different students and I help them along with their exercises and that’s a new experience and something I’m really enjoying. I actually have to attend a lecture myself as well for my PhD, so that happens on a Friday and then the rest of the week is spent researching, gathering information, finding out what is the “state of the art” out there, what is the latest, the cutting edge of this technology – where has artificial intelligence been used – not directly on a satellite but somewhere else. There’s a lot of work has gone into cars so what I’m doing is I’m looking at “what you did in in this research – how did you manage to write software to sit in a car and oh maybe I could apply the same idea, take what you’ve done and rewrite it and make it fit on a satellite.” It’s very, very interesting, so I’m getting exposure to artificial intelligence used in lots of different places.

Top tip from Aidan for those interested in a similar career:

I initially thought I was too old to do a PhD, so I spoke to a lecturer, and he showed me a website with guys in their 60s and I’ve heard of people in their 90s still researching and learning.

What has stood to me is being experienced. I imagine if I had gone straight into this position after college, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much or appreciated it as much either. The person you are in your twenties is quite a different person to the person you are at forty, you grow, show your experiences, and you change, but I would say a common trait throughout all things is empathy. People talk about robots taking over the world and all this and it won’t happen because I think people skills are probably the most important. No matter what career you have you’re always at the end of the day going to have to deal with people, people who are your senior or your boss or people that you have to pass on your knowledge to. I think people skills are really, really important.