Sunday, July 30, 2006
A bit about me
Tags:
duncan drennan
,
engineer simplicity
[Last updated: 2008/05/05]Just a bit of background information on me....
I was born on 6 August 1979 and grew up in Port Elizabeth (South Africa). After school I went on to study electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Stellenbosch. I obtained my undergraduate degree Cum Laude and began my Masters degree directly after that.
My thesis was the design of a transverse flux machine - a high torque density machine (i.e. small, but with lots of va-va-voom). I studied under Prof. Maarten Kamper in the Electrical Machines Research group. After a year of full time postgraduate study I got married (to a very beautiful girl) and moved up to Pretoria. I continued working on my Masters degree until obtaining it in April 2005.
While in Pretoria I worked at Mecalc designing the front end of the MODACS system (low noise analogue design with a good dose of microcontrollers and FPGAs). I was there for just over three years until I decided to start Engineer Simplicity, so we moved to Cape Town and I have been running the company for over two years now.
Running my company has been an interesting, exciting and challenging experience. I have met and worked with some great people, and expanded both my skill and capacity to deliver exciting solutions. I have also slowly come to realise what is really important to me. As I blogged I found myself being drawn more and more strongly toward issues such as energy efficiency (which I have always been interested in) and waste management.
I discovered that what is important to me is to create products that help us move towards a cleaner and better world. So my focus is to find ways to create better products – products that make us happy and are sensitive to the world we live in.
I write about various things in this blog, from environmental issues through to engineering design. My goal is to explore these issues from an engineering perspective. Hopefully this inspires engineers to build a better cleaner world, and exposes people to new thoughts and ideas on how to create a better life right now.
I am glad to have you on this journey with me.
1 comment :
If you are leaving a comment with your Name and URL then make sure you put http:// in front of your URL for a correct link. You can use some HTML tags such as <a>, <b> and <i> in your comment. Thanks for your message - I appreciate it :)
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
Subscribe
About this blog
I'm Duncan Drennan and this blog is about spreading ideas regarding engineering, our environment and creating a better world. You can also follow me on Google Reader.
Popular Posts
-
We are in the middle of an energy crisis and each of us need to make some dramatic changes to ensure that we have electricity, and that the ... -
The short version (my "elevator pitch"): Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use about a fifth of the energy of a normal (incandescen... -
As engineers we spend a lot of time solving problems. A customer has a problem and it needs to be fixed. The electronic boards you have just... -
There are a lot of steps to turn an idea into a product. Each step requires care and attention to ensure that the best product is created. B... -
So here we are, the first blog post...well, really, here I am. My name is Duncan Drennan and this is my blog on business, design, electronic...
-
This post forms a part of the SA Blook . So what is our reality? South Africa has an unemployment rate of about 23%, a skills shortage crisi... -
eWaste is a particularly difficult issue to deal with as it contains many different materials and lots of extremely hazardous substances. I... -
Electronic design automation tools like OrCAD , PADS and Altium Designer are part of an electronic engineer's day–to–day life. We need... -
With 48 post over nearly three years, I am certainly not a prolific blog writer. My goal has never been to write a lot, but to rather explor... -
I think that it is worth trying to understand some of the reasons we are heading towards a food crisis . The result of all of this deregulat...
Nice blog you have here! You are the same age as my wife, give or take a week or two.
ReplyDeleteGuy Kawasaki's blog is a fantastic blog. There are a couple other blogs which are on my required reading list. If you are interested, take a look at the list on www.leoarcher.biz or give me a shout.