Steve Parkes

I moved to Kirriemuir, north of Dundee, just before Christmas 1995. It was very cold, the heating didn't work in the house, and the snow fell until there was about half a metre of drifting snow. We wondered what we had done moving to Dundee. The fact that we still live in Kirriemuir and I still work in Dundee says a lot about the city.

I am a Reader at the University of Dundee, leading a research group working on electronic systems for spacecraft. This is high-tech, challenging, great fun, and involves extensive international collaboration. Technology that we have developed, funded mainly by the European Space Agency (ESA), is being used on many spacecraft across the world. Back in 2002 we spun-out a company, STAR-Dundee, to commercialise some of the technology we had developed.