NMI Annual Awards

It’s not every day you get to meet the CEO of ARM. It’s not every day you get to meet the CEOs of Imagination Technologies, the NMI, Picochip and Neul along with VPs and Directors from Dialog Semiconductor, Freescale, the Minister for Business and Enterprise and many, many more. And it’s definitely not every day you get to stay in a luxury suite in the 5-star Grand Wyndham Hotel in Chelsea, a place normally reserved for Premiership footballers. Well, last Thursday was no ordinary day.

Tom Dell (one of my best friends and course mates) and I were invited to the NMI Industry Summit and Gala Dinner as guests of the UKESF having been nominated as the top two candidates for the prestigious UK Electronics Scholar of the Year Award (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about/news/3857). The fun started the moment we arrived and were shown to our rooms – I simply can’t begin to describe how incredible they were! To call them big would be doing the hotel a massive disservice – they were literally as big as my house in Southampton (and that’s not small!). After this, the afternoon was packed full of speeches from some of the aforementioned CEOs and the Minister and we learned a lot of interesting things about the current state of the industry and its future direction.

After a short break and a chance to come to terms with our surroundings it was time for the main event – the dinner and awards ceremony itself. Our award was up first so we had no chance to settle down and get prepared. We were both really excited just to be there and each would have been delighted to see the other be successful so the pressure was really off, but still, here goes:

“And the winner of the UKESF Scholar of the Year Award goes to…. Adam Malpass!”

Wow. Whoa. I still really don’t know what to say. Thank goodness I didn’t have to give a speech! I just want to say a big congratulations to Tom Dell, a very worthy runner-up and thank you to everyone from the University and Dialog Semiconductor who came along to support. Also a big thank you to Derek and Wendy from the NMI for running the UKESF scheme and inviting us to the event. It was amazing.

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about/news/3863