Apple’s Silicon Engineers Meet Caterham School Pupils

To mark Apple’s support of the government’s Year of Engineering scheme, pupils from Caterham Computer Science met some of the company’s best silicon engineers from the new Silicon Design Centre in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Pupils met and spent the morning chatting with three of the engineers who work on chips for different Apple devices. They explained the processes involved in refining silica in sand to create thin wafers of silicon. Layers of circuits are added to create microchips containing billions of microscopic transistors.

As well as having a thrilling demonstration of a range of Apple’s technologies, such as augmented reality using ARKit apps, pupils also learnt about the skills needed to get to the top in engineering which has 20,000 unfilled graduate vacancies each year.

Apple’s senior vice president hardware technologies, Johny Srouji was quoted in media saying:  “The UK is home to some of the most highly skilled silicon engineers in the world and we’re excited that our UK Silicon Design Centre is located in an area with world-renowned universities and a high concentration of incredible talent to help us advance even further ahead.

“We are hiring the very best engineering talent from across Europe in the fields of silicon design and verification and offering a range of complementary roles in software engineering and modelling.

“Engineering touches every part of our lives and during the UK’s Year of Engineering we’re also delighted to be supporting efforts to inspire interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.”

Caterham School recognises the importance of engineering and the vast opportunities presented to our pupils and were delighted to be invited to the event.

Last year we launched a new computer science department for all our pupils as well as a new innovation centre where pupils can come and create whatever their imagination will let them. Pupils have used the facilities to create inventions ranging from a full-sized arcade machine running games programmed by fellow pupils to self-guided walking robots as well as a plethora of apps launched on the App Store.

Caterham School is one of only a handful of schools in the UK to be formally accredited as an Apple Distinguished School. In February this year we proudly accepted the ‘Best Use of Technology’ Award at the TES Independent School Awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, recognising “measurable excellence in the use of education technology by a school”.

Neil Stokes

Head of Computing