I hope that you will be able to find what you are looking for on our website. We have recently introduced a graduate entry programme to the laboratory and this may be of interest to you. We have introduced the programme because we want to attract more people who are just beginning their careers in research and development. Of course we recruit people with a wide range of experience but feedback from staff has told us that an entry programme, which allows time to be spent in several of our research and engineering groups, would be welcome.
So, if you want to do research and development but are not decided on whether optics, semiconductor devices, electronics or systems research is more interesting, then this could be the place for you. We hope that this programme will help you to learn more quickly about the laboratory and that you will help us by transferring ideas between our research groups. It is often the synergy between ideas from different groups that creates the best projects. At the end of the programme you will be able to choose which group you work in.
We have also updated this web site by adding some details of our European Design Centre. The EDC, as we call it, was founded in 2001 to give engineering support to our larger customers. It is an essential link in the chain of creating new technology and moving it into production. Engineers in the EDC are helping customers to design new products using our very latest components. The feedback from this activity gives very clear direction for our future research.
Sharp is a fascinating place to work. The company has just announced construction of the world's first tenth generation LCD plant. This will use glass sheets which are 2.85m by 3.05m. Large enough to make fifteen 40inch LCD at once. It has also been announced that the same site will host a new thin film solar plant capable of producing 1,000 MW of thin film solar panels every year. This investment will certainly keep Sharp at the leading edge of LCD and solar panel manufacture.
Our job in this laboratory is to produce a continual flow of new technology that can be used in Sharp products and help to keep them at the top of our customers' wish list. Whatever your reason for visiting, I hope that you will take the time to read about some of our research.
Stephen Bold
Managing Director
