Derek Abbott Quotes

Derek Abbott is a physicist and electronic engineer.

In the 1969-1971 period, he was a boarder at Copthorne Preparatory School, Sussex, UK.During 1971-1978 he attended the Holland Park School London.In late 1977, he began work at GEC Hirst Research Centre, Wembley, UK, performing research in the area of CCD and microchip design for imaging systems. Whilst working, he graduated in 1982 with a BSc in Physics from Loughborough University. In 1986, he began work as a microchip designer at Austek Microsystems in Adelaide, Australia. In 1987, he joined the University of Adelaide completing his PhD thesis in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in 1995, entitled GaAs MESFET Photodetectors for Imaging Arrays, under Kamran Eshraghian and Bruce R. Davis.He became a fellow of the IEEE in 2005 "for contributions to analysis of noise and stochastic phenomena in vision systems". Wikipedia

✵ 3. May 1960

Derek Abbott: 7 quotes 0 likes

Famous Derek Abbott Quotes

“My starting point is as an academic who always thought nuclear was the answer, but who then looked at the figures and came to an inescapable conclusion that solar-hydrogen is the long-term future. I did not come at this as a green evangelist. I am a reluctant convert.”

Derek Abbott

On energy supply and solar power

“The biggest challenge [for solar power] is escaping from the economic effects of vendor lock-in where large investments in nuclear and traditional energy sources keep us 'locked-in' to feeding monsters that will bring us down an economic black hole. It's rather like the play The Little Shop of Horrors where a man-eating plant is initially fed small amounts, but then its voracious appetite sends it into a downward spiral swallowing up anyone that gets in its way.”

Derek Abbott

On energy supply and solar power

“Efficiency is not the issue when you go solar. There is so much solar that all you have to do is invest in the non-recurring cost of more dishes to drive a solar-hydrogen economy at whatever efficiency it happens to sit at.”

Derek Abbott

On energy supply and solar power

“My advice to all students is to question everything! You never know where a "silly question" may lead you.”

Derek Abbott

Statement in his Introductory profile at The University of Adelaide http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/people/profiles/academic.html#abbott.

“One can justify solar-hydrogen simply on grounds of economic resource viability without any green agenda.”

Derek Abbott

On energy supply and solar power

“The fact that there simply is 5,000 times more sun power than our consumption needs makes me very optimistic. It's a fantastic resource. We have the ingenuity to send man to the moon, so we definitively have the ingenuity to tap the sun's resources.”

Derek Abbott

On energy supply and solar power

“My advice to prospective PhD students is to follow your passion and pick a topic that interests you — don't do a PhD topic that you hate, but you think will be lucrative. Because the big picture is that it is the fundamentals learned and problem solving skills gained from your PhD that will open the real career doors. Topics come in and out of fashion — it is the investment in yourself and the person you become through your PhD experience that really matters in the end. Of course, if you happen to love a topic that turns out lucrative then great — but this is hard to predict.”

Derek Abbott

Introductory profile at The University of Adelaide

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