Ex-College Computing Student to be Awarded Doctor Title
A former Coleg Llandrillo student who refuses to allow Asperger’s Syndrome be an obstacle to him succeeding, will shortly be awarded a PhD and will be permitted to use the title ‘Dr’.
The soon-to-be Dr Ryan Ward successfully defended his thesis recently and will shortly be awarded a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Liverpool University. He will continue to work at the university in a post-Doctoral research position as a project engineer.
Twenty-something Ryan - whose family home is in Mochdre - left Coleg Llandrillo in 2014 after achieving D*D*D* in his BTEC L3 Extended Diploma in IT. He then gained a place at Bangor University, graduating top of his class in 2018 with a First-Class Honours Degree in Computer Science. During his time at Bangor, he won the Dr Jan Abas Award, and was also named runner-up for the Dr John Robert Jones Award for the best overall academic achievement throughout the whole university.
He then immediately secured a four-year PhD placement at Liverpool University, researching virtual reality, synaesthesia and human-machine interfaces in its Department of Cognitive Psychology and Electrical Engineering & Electronics.
He recently successfully defended his thesis in a final Viva examination for a PhD in Electronics & Electrical Engineering, and all being well, will soon be Dr Ryan Ward.
Ryan - whose father Patrick works within the Sports department at the college’s Rhos-on-Sea campus - has a patent application pending and has been published in various academic journals numerous times over the last four years, including the prestigious “Nature” journal in 2020. He recently presented one of his papers at the IMRF 2022 Conference, in Ulm, Germany.
He originally enrolled at Coleg Llandrillo after spending a year in his school’s sixth form, finding that the latter’s learning environment did not suit his needs. After joining college, he soon discovered that he had an exceptional aptitude for computer coding and the rest, as they say, is history.
For more information on our courses in Computing, please contact the college’s Learner Services team on 01492 542 338.
Email: enquiries.llandrillo@gllm.ac.uk
Web: www.gllm.ac.uk
