In the first double-guest episode of Enterprise Sessions from the University of Bristol, Professor Michele Barbour speaks with Professor Martin Kuball and Dr Katie Hore for a compelling conversation about Rewire — the UK’s flagship Innovation and Knowledge Centre transforming the future of power electronics, semiconductors and clean energy.
Together, they unpack how advanced semiconductor materials, national-scale collaboration, and deep industry partnerships are accelerating the shift to reliable, efficient and sustainable electrical systems. From 5‑minute EV charging to radiation‑hard materials for fusion reactors and space missions, discover how Rewire is shaping technologies that will power our future.
Learn how Martin and Katie’s very different career journeys converged on the shared mission of building a national semiconductor ecosystem — one that spans curiosity‑driven research, cutting-edge materials science, industrial co‑creation, and the training of the next generation of innovators.
🔍 In the episode:
- How Rewire is reinventing semiconductor technology for the UK and beyond
- The surprising links between fundamental science and real‑world engineering impact
- What Innovation and Knowledge Centres are — and why they matter
- Building an ecosystem: 35+ industrial partners, three universities, and government
- The future of power electronics: efficient grids, EV charging, aerospace & fusion
- How students, postdocs and startups join and benefit from the Rewire community
- Career reflections: taking opportunities, embracing uncertainty and finding the fun
🌐 About the Enterprise Sessions
The Enterprise Sessions bring together a diverse mix of company founders and researchers who talk openly about their personal experiences of forming spinouts and start-ups, raising capital, academic-industry partnerships and the joys of translating research discoveries into real-world impact. The series aims to inform, inspire and challenge myths and stereotypes about research commercialisation and how businesses and universities can work together to tackle society’s biggest challenges.
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Connect with our Guests:
Prof. Michele Barbour – LinkedIn
Chapters:
- 00:00 – Introductions: Martin & Katie’s paths into semiconductors
- 03:48 – How industry collaboration became central to Martin’s research
- 07:44 – Moving from industry to academia: Katie on the culture shift
- 09:43 – What Rewire is trying to achieve — and why it matters
- 12:15 – Modernising the electrical grid & improving energy efficiency
- 14:04 – Inside an Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC)
- 16:15 – Long timelines, deep tech, and developing “hero” devices
- 18:52 – Partnering with 35 companies: competition, collaboration & NDAs
- 21:11 – Building an ecosystem across Bristol, Cambridge & Warwick
- 24:42 – Katie on strategy, services and making university capabilities accessible
- 28:00 – Who’s involved: students, postdocs and the wider Rewire team
- 30:49 – Priorities for the next 12 months — and for the five‑year arc
- 33:17 – What success looks like for Rewire
- 34:45 – Inspiring the next generation of engineers
- 37:04 – Why compound semiconductors matter (and what they are)
- 41:51 – The next frontier: gallium oxide & new materials
- 42:38 – Real‑world applications: EVs, grid, healthcare, space & fusion
- 47:31 – International collaboration & researcher exchange
- 49:59 – The power of diverse teams and interdisciplinary thinking
- 50:55 – Career advice: taking opportunities and embracing discomfort
- 58:47 – The importance of mentors in research careers
- 01:02:03 – Bristol’s semiconductor ecosystem
- 01:05:28 – Final reflections: what young Martin & Katie would think today
Transcript:
00:00:09 Prof Michele Barbour
Welcome to another Enterprise session from the University of Bristol. My name is Professor Michele Barbour and today I am delighted to be joined by Professor Martin Kuball and Dr. Katie Hore. Katie, Martin, it’s lovely to see you. Thank you very much for joining us.
00:00:22 Prof Michele Barbour
So I’m really looking forward to finding out about all the work you do together, particularly the Rewire project. But before we get into the depths of that, Perhaps you can both tell me a little bit about your backgrounds and what brought you here to Bristol. And you can go back as far in your history or as recent as you please, as it’s early up to you. So Katie, why don’t we start with you?
00:00:42 Dr Katie Hore
Great, thank you, Michele. So I’ve been working in the semiconductor industry for I think about 12 years now. My PhD was in something completely different in hydrogen storage materials. And then I was looking for a job in Bristol and started working for Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology. So I spent about 10 years there working firstly in technical roles in the lab, etching 3-5 materials. And then I moved to a strategy role.
00:01:06 Dr Katie Hore
And yeah, after about 10 years there, I thought, well, what else could I do?
How could I use these skills somewhere else? And the job opportunity at Rewire seemed ideal as a way to apply those skills to something that had real world impact.
00:01:19 Prof Michele Barbour
As we go through, I’d love to find out more about that because you’re quite new into the academic environment. So I’d love to understand more about how the compare and contrast has worked with that. And I’m sure you bring a lot of skills from industry into this role that are absolutely crucial.
00:01:30 Prof Michele Barbour
But before we do that, Martin, let’s have your backstory.
00:01:33 Prof Martin Kuball
I’m Martin Kubel. I hold the Royal Academy of Engineering and Emerging Technologies. I work on semi electronics technology since probably about 25 years. I run a research center about 30, 40 people who work on power electronics, which we use for net zero. We work on RF electronics, which we use for communications or different other technologies related to this.
00:01:55 Prof Martin Kuball
I lead the Rewire project. Katie mentioned earlier, we were trying to revolutionize how you save energies and make effectively our environment cleaner. And also job creation is an important part. And Being an academic, I’ve been always working with the industry and that has been very important to me because on the one hand, it’s exciting to know industry problems and to help solving them and directing research, in some cases, you know, it’s more fundamental. Maybe the outcome will be 20 years. Maybe the next one is in one or two years. And you train students and postdocs who may work for industry.
00:02:30 Prof Martin Kuball
And before coming to Bristol, probably around 25 years ago, I was working in the US, working on developing blue laser diodes. At the time, the US was actually developing blue laser diodes. You find in different systems. You found in Blu-ray players, which you don’t find very much anymore. They’re gone, kind of.
00:02:48 Prof Martin Kuball
And before that I came from Germany, worked actually, I worked in semiconductors, so in contrast to Katie, I was actually doing semiconductors, doing my PhD, I was working on the fundamental physics aspects, how surfaces change, how surfaces react, gallium arsenide surfaces, hydrogen, which is quite far away from industry, but it’s a good solid foundation then to work with industry.
00:03:11 Prof Michele Barbour
Martin, that’s really fascinating. I’ve known you a long time, but actually there’s quite a bit in that I didn’t know. It strikes me that a lot of researchers go on a journey from doing fundamental research to wanting to apply that in a real world context. But you did it quite some time ago, maybe when that was more unusual, maybe when a lot of researchers were more about just the pure research. So how was that? How was that received by your peers? Were you in an environment where that was the norm or were you sort of stepping out and doing something adventurous and new when you started working with industry back all those years ago?
00:03:45 Prof Martin Kuball
Probably more unusual if I think back when I did even one step further back when I did my master’s degree, which was also working with Volkswagen at that point with optical switches at the University of Kaiserslautern, somewhere in southwestern Germany. It was in a corner of the campus, so far away from everybody else effectively. Maybe not intentional, but for me it’s a bit illustrating.
00:04:07 Prof Martin Kuball
But working in the US – US had a bit more advanced on that at that moment in time. I was working with, at that point, Cree on their blue laser dyes and also a little bit with Nichia in Japan, having interaction with at least. In the US, I got a little bit inspired. There’s the opportunities to talk to industry, to find out the problems were much greater at that point than in Germany, but in Europe in general. When I moved to the UK, still unusual. I like talking to people. You go to meetings, talk to people, understand what their problems are, and you start understanding industry has real problems.
00:04:43 Prof Martin Kuball
A physicist or engineer at the university can help doing, and it’s not kind of solving a problem in a month, but finding these compromises where you work with industry, help them immediate problems, but also find solutions for two or three years down the line. And this is kind of exciting to really apply exciting physics to exciting engineering problems, also developing each other. And in hindsight, if I think back, it helps also getting funding for the research. That was not the reason why I did it was a curiosity what the industry problems are. But in hindsight, this was a really great idea. I should have thought about that first, but it was the other way around – I was just curious, what are the problems industry has?
00:05:25 Prof Michele Barbour
But actually as researchers, I think that’s a really useful insight because I think a lot of us are curiosity driven. And yes, chasing funding is something we need to do. It’s our bread and butter. But actually, as a motivation, I think, to feel that talking to industry gives you exciting new opportunities from a curiosity point of view is a really helpful kind of narrative.
00:05:44 Prof Michele Barbour
Do you feel that the culture in, I suppose, in higher education, specifically in the UK, higher education is more embracing of those sorts of opportunities now? Or do you still feel like that’s sort of not the norm?
00:05:57 Prof Martin Kuball
Increasingly embracing, but you also find some researchers saying, I can’t work with industry because they’re thinking too short-term. Then you need fundamental research also, which has nothing to do with industry. So this is an important part as well of the academic society. And no one should be forced to work with industry. But people should see the opportunities. If you find the right person, you need to find the right person in industry. Not every industry person in industry is the right place to work with. I mean, for example, also rewire, I mean, I met Katie even before actually she joined Bristol from the Rewire. We had discussion Oxford Instruments when you’re working Oxford and plasma technology at that point. And even understanding what are issues of equipment manufacturers for clean rooms. It’s just, it’s exciting. I mean, and students can get the excitement as well.
00:06:47 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, for example, we go a lot to a conference called CS Mantag, which is in the US, which is a probably 80% industry. I try to take a lot of students along to this conference. And it opens their eyes. What exciting opportunity. And as an academic, okay, it’s great to write nice papers, but it’s equally great at least training young people to grow up, to work in industry, to work in academia, and to see their eyes opening up, oh, there’s really cool technologies evolving from industry, but that doesn’t mean they have to work for industry, but they could also work for academia and get the inspiration from current problems.
00:07:24 Prof Michele Barbour
Katie, you’re an example of exactly what I’m talking about, which is someone who’s gone from their PhD, they’ve gone into industry, and now here you are back in a kind of university environment. So talk me through how that’s been for you. And in particular, I guess, coming back into this university, has it been what you expected? Have there been any sort of surprises or enlightening moments?
00:07:46 Dr Katie Hore
I more or less knew what to expect. So both my parents were academics, my husband was an academic. So I know how it is to work with industry. And I did quite a lot of work with academics in my previous role. I think some of the things that have surprised me is perhaps, yeah, when I did my PhD, particularly in chemistry, it was seen as unusual to work with industry. You know, it was that slightly strange organic chemistry professor who had a lot of money, but it wasn’t really quite seen as such pure science. Whereas now it really is seen as the way to make impactful science is to have that industry input from as early as you possibly can.
00:08:27 Dr Katie Hore
Even, fundamental research is incredibly important, but having a conversation with industry and a lot of people in industry, they are scientists, they love having these conversations. It’s just fun. I very much enjoyed that in my previous role because it allowed you to explore things that you didn’t have time to when you’re in the lab. You know, if you’re preparing samples for a customer, if it doesn’t work, you just have to move on and try something else. But if you can do a project with a university, and explore why that didn’t work, it can lead to solutions for the future. So that interaction is incredibly important from both sides.
00:09:02 Prof Michele Barbour
Fantastic. And I think that’s, again, a really useful observation that it’s not industry, academia, we’re the same human beings. Quite often we cross those boundaries so that the joy of having fun in your working life, I think it’s not something we always embrace as much as we could. I’m glad to hear fun is something that’s formed an important part of your career, career satisfaction to date.
00:09:24 Prof Michele Barbour
Okay, I’ve held us off long enough. I need to hear more about the Rewire project. So perhaps you can tell me a little bit, maybe if we start with the why, what are you trying to achieve with Rewire? And then we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the who and the what and the how.
00:09:38 Dr Katie Hore
I think the main thing, I mean, I’d like to and we’d really like to achieve is creating technology which actually changed people’s lives. So we’re working on new types of power semiconductor devices. And these are the devices that will go into things like 5 minutes electric car charging. So charging your electric car takes no longer than filling with petrol, therefore it’s a practical alternative. Things like electric freight transport and electric public transport in cities, making them nice, clean, healthy places to live, and allowing us to sort of explore the frontiers. So things like space exploration. These are small, light, very reliable devices, ideal for sending into space and allowing us just to do that fun, exciting science that we all like talking about. And I think, Martin, do you want to talk more about the aims of an IKC?
00:10:27 Prof Martin Kuball
Before that, I think just throwing in this nice example of the Heathrow fire at some point in the power station. I mean, that’s a good example of how sensitive the grid is, actually how we need to modernize the grid, and then also that’s I think we can hopefully transform with technology, semiconductor technology we develop. And there are multiple of those examples. I had a discussion with a journalist a few days ago, and he was going actually through failures of the grid. And actually he said, he told me, there are actually way more examples where the grid falls down beyond this high-profile event. And it’s an outdated grid. The grid has been around for a long time, obviously. It costs a lot of money to modernize the grid. It’s not going to happen from today to tomorrow, but we’ll be hoping to develop and rewire, and that’s, I mean, Bristol-led with partners in work in Cambridge to develop the semiconductor technology where you can build, in the end, converters, inverters to help the grid.
00:11:24 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, the example is also more going to be efficient, like semiconductor technology typically in this field is 97%, 98% efficient. Doesn’t sound the 2, 3% you’re losing a lot. But if you convert the power down multiple times from 11 or 30 kilovolts in which country you have to the 220 volts, you lose 20, 30% of the power. And that’s a lot.
00:11:48 Prof Martin Kuball
And if I think even a bit further back, I mean, there was this call from UK government to these innovation knowledge centers, which is a scheme they developed even before that, but not in the semi-actor space – said, hold on, there’s a huge opportunity we can go for to develop this. And I even remember going, reading the call in detail, kind of, how can we shape that? What are the best partners to work with? I mean, just got it off the ground.
00:12:17 Prof Martin Kuball
I was really glad Katie then joining as innovation director, because it’s a journey which needs academia and industry industry background, which Katie brings in. I mean, I work with industry, but it’s still a different perspective working for industry for a long period of time. And that’s beautiful synergy to have fun, to change people’s life, to make energy costs cheaper, to make grid more reliable. And EV chargers is a good example.
00:12:45 Prof Martin Kuball
But then also make the awareness to UK government, it is important to invest into these technology areas. The UK is competing internationally against other countries, and there’s a huge market opportunity. Power electronics, which is the technology we’re working on, is an 18 billion market for the UK. And that’s a lot of money and a lot of jobs.
00:13:09 Prof Michele Barbour
So you can look at this at so many different scales, can’t you? There’s the huge economic opportunity and advantage to be gained here. And as you say, it is a competitive space. There’s the modernization of the grid, which is something that a lot of people on the street wouldn’t care about until it goes wrong. And then when it goes wrong, it’s the most important thing. The Heathrow Fire is a great example, but there are many others. And you say that the ones that hit the headlines are a very small proportion of the ones that happen. But then there’s the really relatable charging my electric car in the same time it would take to fill a petrol car up with petrol, that really kind of every day, everybody can understand sort of opportunities. So there’s a lot of different length scales, I guess, that I would look at this.
00:13:42 Prof Michele Barbour
Tell me, maybe tell me a little bit more about the concept of an innovation knowledge center, because that’s something that a lot of people wouldn’t be familiar with. So what’s the kind of underlying premise? And then we’ll talk about how you’re applying it specifically in power electronics.
00:13:54 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, if you look at technology’s work and technology rating this level, TRLs and if it’s 1 to 10 and very low is nothing really useful as fundamental research and 10 is production side. Most funding in the UK from government or different organizations is in the lower TRL levels. Then there’s industry funding from government, which is in the mid-range TRL level. But what the Innovation Knowledge Center trying to do, bridge more or less the broadest possible range of TRL levels. So that we do fundamental research, we translate the semi-conductor technology, we develop into devices, use those devices to build products, which we then also commercialize as partners.
00:14:39 Prof Martin Kuball
So we have about 35 industrial partners we work with, which we then also use for commercialization and helping or solving their problems. And bridging this huge range is developing new things, but then also commercializing. And that is very unique.
00:14:56 Prof Michele Barbour
And it strikes me that you would have to have, you’ve already mentioned it, but have to have a very long view if you’re going to do that, to be able to be working on and sort of conceiving of the fundamental research, the very low TRLs, but having this anticipation of where it could go, where it could even, having the conversations that mean that your, at least your fundamental research, while it is still fundamental, is informed by where it could ultimately lead. Is that true?
00:15:20 Dr Katie Hore
It does take a long time to go from a fundamental idea to creating even just one sort of hero product, essentially, you know, in semiconductors you tend to have, we created this brilliant chip, we made 300 of them, one of them worked. And that’s brilliant to say this technology could work, but then there is a lot more that has to go into, meaning you can create thousands of those and 90% of them work brilliantly and you can test them quickly, identify the ones that failed and chuck them out.
00:15:46 Dr Katie Hore
I mean, that can take, what, 10, 15 years longer potentially. And so you do have to have a long view, but having done some of the work on what you think is coming, what the applications are, talking to industry, because you might have an idea that it will be fabulous with the grid, and that’s true, but then someone from a car manufacturer can come along and say, actually, that would work great for our charger. So it’s getting those different applications together so you know what you’re working towards.
00:16:11 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, so the fundamental research is still in some, with the applied research in mind, even though it is fundamental at the outset?
Michele, keep in mind, I mean, not everything goes from the fundamental research to the, in some of who get weeded out, but also some the other way. We start not at zeroing cases and company has a certain problem. We can use something we’ve developed over the last 10 years already and can feed in already now.
00:16:34 Prof Martin Kuball
It has a whole ecosystem around. I mean, I’ve been working for 25 years in that field. So we’ve done a lot of stuff in power electronics, semi electronics. but we also work in compound RF microwave electronics to use for communication. Again, there’s a cross-fertilization. We had some neat paper out, so where we develop components for 6G. I mean, we also have a nice news article on effectively emulating, traveling virtually, also diagnostics via NHS or health systems where you don’t need to see a doctor. Huge opportunities, that’s the technology we develop as an industrial partner. It’s not part of Rewire because there’s microwave electronics. But again, it may take another 5 or 10 years to actually being a usable product, which in addition to what Katie mentioned, needs to be at the right price.
00:17:25 Prof Michele Barbour
Of course, yeah.
00:17:26 Prof Martin Kuball
Because people need to buy it. And Rewire is nested in a whole range of other activities happening.
00:17:39 Prof Michele Barbour
You’ve clearly worked with industry partners for many years. Martin, Katie, you have been the industry partner and are now sort of really supporting and generating a lot of new partnerships. I think a lot of researchers would be familiar, at least with the concept of having a partnership relationship with industry, even if they haven’t done it themselves. But Rewire has 35 partners, you said. So tell me a little bit about that. What the nature of those partners, some of these partners are in competition with each other in the marketplace. So how can you partner with multiple at once? How does that actually work in practice?
00:18:10 Prof Martin Kuball
You need to find, I mean, we have open events for different parts. I mean, we work with material suppliers, we work with people who make clean room equipment, we work with suppliers who make devices, we work with suppliers who are end users, yes, they are competition. And we have open events and people talk with and reason, but then we have also one-to-one interactions which are then shielded with non-disclosure agreements from other partners. So you need to find that balance of both.
00:18:39 Dr Katie Hore
Yeah, so there’s, to some extent, those initial discussions, there are projects you can come up with which are pre-competitive. So something which is a significant number of years out, perhaps a company isn’t working on in their R&D programme, but they’re interested in it, they want to know what’s going on. And companies do tend to be a little more open with each other on those problems because they are, you know, there are long-term problems and there are things that need solving before they can bring that to them in-house R&D. Companies do tend to be quite open about that.
00:19:05 Dr Katie Hore
And then as Martin says, you have individual discussions on individual problems and companies I think are on the whole quite, so long as you have the reassurance and the trust there, they’re comfortable of working with a university or a company because a company will be working with multiple competitors. You know, Oxford Instruments supplies, huge parts of the semiconductor industry. And our customers, you know, came to us and were trusting that we wouldn’t pass that on. And in exactly the same way, you can work with the university – so long as you have that relationship established, they’re happy to work with you on their specific competitive problems.
00:19:36 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, Michele, if you take that in a different angle, you said we work with companies which are compete, but we work also with companies through the whole supply chain. So it’s the other angle. And we have the lateral angle of competing companies and the vertical angle of companies which feed into each other, for example – a materials company will provide materials through a device, compound semiconductor device manufacturer, and you have also these interactions, and hopefully what we’re doing, and I think we’re seeing this already, that the interaction we’re creating with Rewire, getting these partners together, makes also these connections. So that we have, it’s a field, the growing crop effectively.
00:20:17 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, there’s a convening angle then, it sounds like, for the university partners. And I think you said there are three university partners in Rewire, is it right? Cambridge, Warwick and Bristol. But partly what you’re doing is actually bringing these companies to meet each other and to maybe understand one another’s position a little bit better. So it’s important to sort of And again, an ecosystem-building role, as well as the direct researchers working on problems that are well-informed by industry needs, right?
00:20:41 Prof Martin Kuball
That is correct. I mean, we ran an event, for example, last year. We had about 100 people in the engine shed, and the excitement, people talking, exchanging ideas and seeing what they can actually develop and have access to. It was great.
00:20:57 Prof Martin Kuball
We’re going to run one in November again this year. And we had UK government as well. We had local government there as well. Because for them, it’s important to see the growth of economy and jobs at the same point. It’s partnership working together, universities with industry, but also with government.
00:21:15 Prof Michele Barbour
Absolutely. It’s a triple helix, isn’t it? And are these companies that you work with primarily sort of national, international? Do you also work with smaller companies in this project?
00:21:25 Dr Katie Hore
Both. So we are UK focused because that’s where our funding comes from, but we work with global companies, companies based elsewhere and small startups based in the UK, particularly around Bristol. It’s always good to work with startups because they have a lot of ideas and a lot of input to put into that.
00:21:43 Prof Michele Barbour
A lot of agility, but having worked in the startup environment myself, not always that sort of long-term security. So this kind of interaction, I think, could probably help build their pipelines as well.
00:21:53 Dr Katie Hore
Yes, exactly. And then you have the longer term relationships with established companies. So you can really get that trust going to build, you know, they can bring a problem to the University of Bristol and we will help fix it. We do have the expertise to really contribute to what happens next. And therefore, they’ll probably come to us with an earlier problem next time or a more difficult problem or just an idea. And so, large companies, you can form those really productive relationships.
00:22:20 Prof Martin Kuball
So keep in mind, Michele, I mean, what you, I mean, so the local companies, international companies, semi detector technology is international. You cannot prevent this also for the country of the size of the UK. You have to go outside.
00:22:32 Prof Martin Kuball
So we have interaction with companies, some of it with the UK office, but some don’t actually even have a strong UK office, have more sales office who work with their main R&D center in a different country. But still, I mean, for example, best known as company is TSMC in Taiwan, which manufactures a lot of products for people. If things are designed in the UK, and the IP is whole held in the UK, wherever it’s manufactured, in some cases, you like to do it in the UK, but it’s not critically important. Whoever is best suited to manufacture, we own the IP as the UK or certain UK entities. We make the product, the further you go up in the product chain, the more profit margin you typically have. So you can make the material, you have the smallest profit margin. If you sell a full product like a phone or communication system or a charging station, that’s typically, not always, typically you have the largest margin.
00:23:32 Prof Michele Barbour
Fascinating stuff. Brilliant. So, okay, I feel like I’m getting a good understanding of your roles and how you work together. Katie, tell me a little bit more about your kind of day-to-day role with Rewire. What are the sort of things that you are, what you need to prioritize, the kind of problems you need to unpick?
00:23:53 Dr Katie Hore
So there’s a lot about forming those relationships and just spending time talking to people, setting up calls, talking about rewire, getting the right academics in the room. And then there’s quite a lot about understanding the industry. So where is it going more broadly? Where can Rewire make a real contribution? And where are we going to make the most impact? And who do we have to bring in so we’re able to do that?
00:24:19 Dr Katie Hore
And then there’s a sort of longer term strategy piece, which comes in with like, what products do we need to create so we can fill that gap? And what products industry and other academics actually going to want to come in and use within Rewire? I also spend quite a lot of time at events, so talking, telling people about what we do, just talking about the science, which is the fun bit, to be honest.
00:24:41 Prof Martin Kuball
For example, we both had a discussion over coffee. How can we make industry known, not academia known, what services we can provide to them? So how can we, for example, detail that’s how they access clean rooms for prototyping, for testing facility and so forth? And these are things we also then work together, how to actually develop these gateways from external parties into actually where they can actually develop, help develop a product. Like a clean room is expensive. At small companies, you wouldn’t have one yourself, but it’s cheaper to access a clean room.
00:25:12 Prof Michele Barbour
00:25:14 Prof Michele Barbour
But that’s interesting – I’ve done a number of these interviews of late and actually that sort of service aspect of what you do, which I had not appreciated was part of the Rewire sort of undertaking, is something that a lot of people are grappling with. You have a service that specialists that small companies won’t have their own, they need to access on a need basis, or large companies too. And that sort of, that gateway, that marketing challenge is not insignificant actually. So I’m going to be probably sending a couple of people to your door to find out how you’re doing it.
00:25:44 Prof Martin Kuball
How do you make it easy for people to find something?
00:25:46 Prof Michele Barbour
For example, To know it exists and then to access it. It’s hard.
00:25:49 Prof Martin Kuball
It’s actually hard because I sometimes look Google something up. I like to have this tool and not necessarily finding it easy.
00:25:56 Prof Michele Barbour
No, absolutely. It’s how we make it really easy to find because people don’t have hours to search for these things. They need quick answers. And I think that’s it’s. It’s not a trivial undertaking, but it is something that’s more and more something we as universities need to grapple with and find solutions to because we have some really exciting kit, not just us, lots of institutions, and we need to be able to be making that available to the people that need and want to use it.
00:26:18 Prof Michele Barbour
So I’ve got a much better understanding now of your roles. Who else is part of this project within the institution? So what do you get sort of postgraduates involved in some of these conversations or postdocs or sort of inform them about the wider context of their research. Who else is part of this?
00:26:33 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, we have Alex Oliver, who is business development manager. He helps with the business engagement. We have Abby, who’s center manager, who does a lot of the logistics. We have Lunto who does a lot of the IP side and contract side and from the administrative side, Simon. So we have that administrative team in addition to us supporting here. And then we have lots of postgraduate students and postdocs and naturally other academics who are involved in it.
00:27:01 Prof Michele Barbour
And do your postgrads and your sort of early career researchers How do they respond to this? Have they come to you, Martin, because they know you work with industry in this way and that was what attracted them to work with you? Or have they come to this from the point of view of research and this is opening their eyes to applying their research in a different context? What effect does that have on them?
00:27:19 Prof Martin Kuball
The group I run is pretty well known international.So we get a lot of people just approaching, can we work for you? And then they say, oh, you can work with industry. And that industry angle, they typically find very exciting. And even those who come here not aware of it, oh, this is really cool to work with industry. So then you open their eyes, but it’s a track record you build. It’s naturally hard to find good people, students and postdocs, PhD students and postdocs at the same time. But having a good reputation and knowing people across the planet helps.
00:27:50 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, it builds that. You said that reputation and then you’re attracting amazing researchers, but maybe also those who are open to working with industry from the beginning, rather than you having to make the case that that’s something that’s attractive.
00:28:01 Prof Martin Kuball
Yeah, in the network and Katie knows people, other people knows people is people know people who know people, yeah, and that’s – It’s science and engineering it’s not just a machine, there are people around. I mean, there are also some particular researchers who don’t like that particular aspect, but I think that’s the strength of ReWire, I think, in general, that we have people working together, we have a lot of events, we have a lot of interactions, I think we’re probably around 2, three, four meetings with a good number per week. Just getting brains together to brainstorm, how can we do better? We had a strategy planning session yesterday with a few core academics. I think we’re doing good stuff, how we’re doing it, but there’s always room to improve. How can we actually bring it even one notch higher?
00:28:46 Prof Michele Barbour
So on that basis, I guess, then what’s ahead for Rewire? You’ve given us some flavor of some of the really long-term goals and some of the nature of the partners you’re working with and how you work with them. What are these sort of priorities over the next 12 months and where is it going after that?
00:29:00 Dr Katie Hore
We’ve had our first year, so we’ve had our first 12 months. I think it’s considering how that went and then setting out what we want to do next, which for me is finding those products and finding the way to market them in a way that’s efficient. Because we have a team, but it’s a relatively small team. There is a lot we need to do. So we need to define the products very closely and then market them to industry and then make sure we’ve done that in the way that industry wants us to. It’s the easiest way for them to contact us because there’s no point making it overly complicated, which is something the university can be quite good at times.
00:29:33 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, absolutely we can and however much a lot of us want to simplify it. It’s not always simple to simplify.
00:29:39 Dr Katie Hore
No, and Luntu, who’s done a lot of work with contracts, has been absolutely amazing with that, with challenging things. Is this necessary? Can we, you know, move on and do it in a slightly different way? And that’s been very good for Rewire and hopefully has set up a good sort of a good scheme or a good template for the next organisation within the university who wants to come along and do something similar.
00:29:59 Dr Katie Hore
And then sort of for beyond 12 months, so we’re funded for five years, so we’re already thinking about what are we going to do at the end of that? How do we demonstrate that potentially get more government funding? And how do we demonstrate that we have or we will have enough income coming in to create something that’s more self-sustaining? So we don’t need continual sort of funding body input just to run rewire.
00:30:24 Prof Martin Kuball
And also what do you see kind of in interaction with companies where you see the trends initially, we had meetings with companies explaining what we aim to do. Those conversations, particularly with new companies, we don’t know. Those conversations transfer into what do we do specific now.
00:30:40 Prof Martin Kuball
So in a year’s time, I would expect with various companies, like this afternoon, we’re going out to a specific company to find this is what we’re going to do in a year’s time, deliver in a year’s time for your certain application. I can’t say who we’re talking to.
00:30:54 Prof Michele Barbour
No, for sure. But you’ve moved from the sort of, I don’t want to say sales, but to actually making something to define and delivery.
00:31:02 Prof Martin Kuball
Exactly.
00:31:03 Prof Michele Barbour
Really exciting. Yeah. So over that five-year arc and absolutely respecting and applauding that wish to make it a sort of self-sustaining entity, what was success like? It’s such a cliched question, but what would you be really satisfied if it had happened at that sort of five-year mark?
00:31:22 Dr Katie Hore
I think two things for me, it is demonstrating that we can be self-sustaining so we can continue with the impact. But also it’s just having a product out there, something which you can point to and say Rewire contributed to your phone, your charger, making the national grid more secure. I think that’s the way you engage people who perhaps don’t necessarily want to come in on the science side, but they can definitely get on board with it’s making my life slightly more reliable or more fun.
00:31:52 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, equally, you can add to this: if you have effectively nice sales pitch stories, we created this, for example, product, and a young school kid gets excited about it, they might want to do engineering and find it science and find it.
00:32:08 Prof Martin Kuball
The greatest challenge of industry is people not finding enough good people. I mean, various companies you work with, do you know people we could hire? And that’s quite common. And if young school kids or students, all different ages, or at the later stage transfer over to go in that particular field, that’s also another success I see.
00:32:29 Prof Michele Barbour
So it’s growing that pipeline of sort of bright and curious people. Coming back to the sort of curiosity driven aspects or the sort of, you know, my phone, this phone works better than a previous phone or now I don’t have to charge my car overnight. Why is that? Aha, where that is. And I want to sort of get involved personally.
00:32:48 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, UK made product or UK led product, UK LPSC and effectively aligned with the UK government’s growth strategy that we grow the UK and I think we can make actually real impact for this. And I mean, also bringing up small startup companies, as Katie mentioned earlier. I have my own startup companies, I’m up solutions where I see the different angles and the challenges, but seeing startup companies grow into something bigger will be absolutely exciting.
00:33:18 Prof Michele Barbour
And for a startup to have a place at this table that you’ve created through Rewire, which is so exciting, it’s having access to those conversations to understand how your product as a startup might be used in the next stage in the supply chain or might benefit from innovations in the supply chain before you, that’s really valuable. And as a startup, it’s not always easy to access those conversations. It’s not always easy to get to the right person in the company, never mind the company itself. So again, I think I’m really finding a strong theme of that convening power of the universities in this dimension.
00:33:51 Prof Michele Barbour
What about the relationship with the other universities? Is there, do you each bring specific expertise, the three universities, or is it more that you’re all experts in the same area and therefore that’s a critical mass sort of dimension?
00:34:02 Prof Martin Kuball
So when we developed this programme, we looked at who are the best complementary universities fitting together. I mean, it’s also, you can’t, it would be great to involve 20 universities. It doesn’t make sense logistically, it’s a nightmare. Traditionally, IKCs, where one university, with a few exceptions, previous ones, and we settled on three. Warwick has specific expertise in silicon carbon, which, for example, we have some, but not to the extent Warwick has. Cambridge has tremendous materials characterization capability and certain growth capabilities, and others as well. So who is best complementary?
00:34:39 Prof Martin Kuball
Naturally, there need to be enough overlap for people to work together, but not 100% overlap. That’s not going to work.
00:34:53 Prof Michele Barbour
So before we get into the details, let’s not make assumptions about the expertise of our audience or indeed of your interviewer. Tell me a little about these semiconductor technologies that you’re working with. And there are lots of different kinds of semiconductors. So why are you working with the ones you’re working with?
00:35:09 Dr Katie Hore
So semiconductors are any materials that are used to make devices which handle electricity or light. And they’re things that we use in our everyday lives. We’re totally reliant on them. If you start counting them up at the beginning of your day, you very quickly get into large numbers and have to forget about it.
00:35:27 Dr Katie Hore
So 80% of the semiconductor devices that we use today are made of silicon, which is great. It’s a material that’s really readily available. We’re very good at using it and manipulating it. But there’s certain applications where we’re getting to the limits of what silicon can use. And so we’re looking for other materials. And these are often things called compound semiconductors. So just materials that are made of two or more elements. Particularly in Rewire, we’re looking at applications in power semiconductors. So these are devices which deal with very, very high amounts, very large voltages of electricity. And silicon, to make a device which deals with kilovolts of electricity and silicon, you need very large devices. And for the National Grid, transformers can be the size of a container.
00:36:13 Prof Michele Barbour
Wow, okay.
00:36:14 Dr Katie Hore
And this is getting expensive and not particularly sustainable, and we’re having to deal with higher and higher voltages, particularly coming from things like wind farms and solar farms. And so we’re looking for these other materials which can deal with these devices. So that container size transformer and silicon can become suitcase sized if you make it out of silicon carbide.
00:36:35 Dr Katie Hore
And so some of these materials like silicon carbide and gallium nitride are really, really good for these applications because of their internal structures, because of their electronic structures. They’re capable of dealing with these higher voltages before the devices start to break.
00:36:49 Prof Michele Barbour
And by making them smaller, that improves a lot of things. I mean, it’s obviously more practical, it’s cheaper to make, there’s a better sustainability sort of angle to that.
00:36:56 Dr Katie Hore
So they’re small, so they’re potentially cheaper to make, not yet, but we’ll get to that point. They’re capable of working at high temperatures, so you don’t need so much cooling. And you do have to develop other ways to package them, to house them. But once you’ve done that, because they’re capable of working at high temperatures, they can be very reliable and they can also be more energy efficient. So you lose less energy in your device. So for net zero, that’s brilliant because then you have to create less energy in the 1st place.
00:37:24 Prof Martin Kuball
And also adding to this, I mean, as Katie said, we use semiconductors and the problem and the good thing at the same time, semiconductors, they’re all underlining everything. So you don’t even know you’re using semiconductors. People don’t even know that it’s like in your phone, you will have a lot of silicon in there. You have some gallium arsenide in there for the radio RF components. For your chargers, if you have a small tiny laptop charger, this will have a gallium nitride component in there. If you have an electric car, that will typically either have silicon or silicon carbide in there. So silicon, 80% of the market, Gallium nitride, certain carbide is in the market and why we’re trying to actually improve their profile and performance even more.
00:38:08 Prof Martin Kuball
We develop new materials, gallium oxide, aluminum nitride, so they’re next generation materials which will be able to handle higher voltages, for example, for grid applications. And this class of compound semiconductors, the UK is actually very strong. And it’s smaller market size than silicon, but we can make a real impact. I mean, five minute chargers, grid applications. And if you look at UK government, they invest in combat consciously. And the team of Rewire, I mean, Bristol, Warwick and Cambridge has a very strong track record in these semiconductors to make innovation to deliver.
00:38:43 Prof Martin Kuball
In the South Wales area, there’s a strong semi-active activity in this field and there’s numerous companies around. We’re also engaging with them because it’s a commercialization route. So we can actually develop all the things which people don’t know that exist and they can use. And save energy, make life easier, make life safer, make healthcare better. And that’s exciting from our side that we can make an impact on people’s lives rather than just writing a paper which ends up in a journal. It’s still an important aspect of writing a paper, disseminating people.
00:39:19 Prof Michele Barbour
Of course, but they’re having that wider impact. And so it sounds that within the compound semiconductor space, there’s what is in scope for you is both improving and further developing existing known compound semiconductors, but also scoping the ones of the future. So that’s sort of horizon three. You mentioned gallium oxide, for example. So that’s in scope as well.
00:39:39 Prof Martin Kuball
We have one of the few gallium oxide growth reactors in Europe and we develop materials, deliver materials within the rewire, but also to external partners. It’s A low-cost technology. We found an exciting way where we can even go gallium oxide and silicon. My PhD student came to me last week in the office said, cool, I can handle this works. And this would even, I mean, we’re still working on this, we’re thinking on can we patent certain aspects we’ve done here. We’ll see. And that could give a huge commercialization opportunity, maybe even with a new startup from the university. We’ll see how that goes.
00:40:16 Prof Michele Barbour
That’s really exciting. So in the fullness of time, please introduce me to that person so I can interview them next year or the year. That sounds amazing.
00:40:23 Prof Michele Barbour
So tell me a little bit more about the kind of applications. You’ve mentioned, for example, rapid charging of electric vehicles. What are some other ways in which some of the semiconductors that you’re developing with partners could have an impact on sort of regular people’s lives?
00:40:43 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, if you take the example of grid and charging at the same time. If you charge a vehicle, it takes 40 minutes plus minus or something to charge a vehicle. There’s some news amount now from BYD in China which claim to have a 5 minute charger. I think we can still do it better.
00:40:58 Prof Martin Kuball
I don’t have electric car. I would love to have one because it’s reach and how long it is actually taking to charge the car. And I think it’s if it takes me 5 minutes or less than 5 minutes, I can drive 1000 miles. I will have an electric car tomorrow because it’s a benefit. It’s cost will be always more expensive than a fuel vehicle. Subsidize it maybe from government and make it interesting cost or help cost side, but it’s a long-term saving and environmentally the right thing to do.
00:41:25 Prof Martin Kuball
And if you look at the grid application, it goes from an 11 or 30 kilovolts down, it’s converted out on 4, 5, 6 steps down there. It’s not just I have my power line and my 220 volts come out. There’s a lot of stuff in between where you waste energy and then people are concerned about building a new power station. Why not having less power station and waste less energy?
00:41:46 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, just concern more of it.
00:41:48 Prof Martin Kuball
Yeah, absolutely.
00:41:49 Prof Michele Barbour
And you mentioned briefly potential healthcare applications. Is there anything more that you can tell us about that?
00:41:54 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, from the healthcare side, power and how to power the components are is an important aspect to it, kind of that you have safe power in a hospital. I mean, if power goes out outside, you don’t want to lose the power in the hospital and have issues on that. But I mean, we have to rewire where we work on power electronics. Saplin, the research group, we work on microwave components, which transmit information. People use 5G, but for 6G, you have to go away from what people use nowadays as semulactor technology. So we developed some components which can incredibly handle way, way more data. So you could do effectively, 3D, whatever diagnostics of people probably in the long, not that long term ahead, but mid term ahead with that high communication rate semiconductor technology we developed recently.
00:42:46 Prof Michele Barbour
Okay, so that could be done sort of remotely or in different locations as opposed to having to be, okay, that’s…
00:42:52 Prof Martin Kuball
Or you talk to someone who’s on the opposite side of the globe. I mean, old days phone, then Skype, and other approaches now. But think about you have that in 3D, you can wrap your hands around someone and feel someone. That would be different. It still probably doesn’t replace the real interaction of people, but it’s one step above. We need higher data rates for doing that. with components we develop in programs outside Rewire, but there’s a synergy, still compound semiconductors, a different angle.
00:43:22 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah.
00:43:23 Dr Katie Hore
The exciting example is that these materials have the potential to be very radiation hard. So if a device is hit, say by a neutron or a gamma ray, it can cause damage. And they can still be damaged, but damaged in a less overall destructive way. So they can still continue working. Some devices can even potentially self-heal. So this is really interesting for space applications, but it’s also really interesting for future fusion reactors, because the inside of your reactor is going to get very radioactive very quickly. You can’t send people in there, and you need to be able to maintain it regularly to replace all the coating inside the reactor.
00:44:00 Dr Katie Hore
And so this is done by currently by sort of remote play by wire robots, but there’s still limitations in what that can do. There are delays, you don’t get that feedback. So being able to have a lot of your power components in the reactor and have them keep working for a reliable, you know, useful amount of time will allow us to maintain those reactors in a way that’s sort of quick and efficient and very safe for the people doing the maintenance.
00:44:24 Prof Michele Barbour
The potential applications of this are just vast, aren’t they, across such a wide range of sectors and applications. It’s incredible.
00:44:31 Prof Martin Kuball
Missioning of old reactors is the same aspect. It’s quite challenging. And there’s robotics, which uses radiation, heart, semi electronics. You can go one step beyond what is possible nowadays.
00:44:44 Prof Michele Barbour
Phenomenal. The recurring theme when you’re talking about all that you’re doing in the potential applications is that international dimension. While this is a UK sort of focus and UK based, initiative project center, you have lots of international collaborations. So talk me through that a little bit more. How does that work? Does that bring challenges? Does that bring advantages?
00:45:04 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, we work internationally with people in the US, in Europe, in Asia, historically, and also in Rewire. I mean, taking one specific example, we’re working with Nagoya University with Amano Sensei, who got Nobel Prize in 2014 for developing blue LEDs, and how it does a lot of also power electronic developments. So we’re trying to find ways in tandem how we can actually jointly in the UK-Japan way, develop this next generation technology. I mean, they work a lot with automotive industry in Japan. It’s huge. I mean, they also have their sites in the UK.
00:45:38 Prof Martin Kuball
So it’s a nice tandem arrangement between the UK and Japan, corresponding Taiwan, a lot of them in that industry. We work with, we have strategic alliance with a few of those, exchange programs, have researchers going forth and back. They learn about the culture, but probably more important or equally important is they develop semi-technology jointly together. And this developing trust, long-term trust, which hopefully then results in growth for UK economy and people in general.
00:46:08 Prof Michele Barbour
And I think that people exchange is so important as well, because, I mean, we do live in a global society. There’s no unwinding that. And actually having that scientific engineering collaboration, but also I do think the benefits of experiencing different cultures and being in different places is fundamentally beneficial to all humans.
00:46:25 Prof Martin Kuball
Universities are melting pots. I mean, the research group itself, my research group is a large fraction from people from outside the UK, obviously people from the UK. And that melting pot of different countries itself is also a positive thing. And then you work with outside parties and that’s a positive learning experience, and interesting that you see actually technology advancing faster.
00:46:49 Prof Martin Kuball
If you have this different cultures, different backgrounds, different genders, different nationalities coming together, each person will have a different angle of solving problem. And I found it very exciting to see what is possible.
00:47:06 Dr Katie Hore
Brilliant working in a group where everyone comes from a slightly different background or a slightly different culture or they’ve done a slightly different degree. In semiconductors, a lot of people think it’s just electrical engineers, but it is a lot of engineers, but there are a lot of physicists. I did chemistry. People are coming in from all these different backgrounds and they do think about how a material works in a very different way. And it allows you to solve problems. It allows you to kind of look at the whole problem rather than just coming at it from your, oh, it must be electronics, whereas I’m coming into being like, it’s a lot of atoms, that looks fun. That’s sort of an aspect.
00:47:40 Prof Michele Barbour
Power of interdisciplinarity.
00:47:42 Dr Katie Hore
Yes, exactly.
00:47:43 Prof Michele Barbour
Wonderful.
00:47:43 Prof Martin Kuball
The side angle we do once a year, maybe sometimes twice a year, and it’s an international food day where each person brings from their own.
00:47:49 Prof Michele Barbour
Oh, I like that.
00:47:50 Prof Martin Kuball
And that’s really fun. I mean, I’ve tried things out, people have brought up, oh, this is really good.
00:47:55 Prof Michele Barbour
That’s a definite additional benefit of working in a truly international team. Fantastic.
00:48:02 Prof Michele Barbour
Both of you have had and continue to have such exciting, rewarding careers and your enthusiasm for it is just evident at all times. You also have careers that a lot of people who are early in their career might well aspire to. So I guess what would you be your advice from someone at any stage really, sort of like school leaving, degree, PhD and so on, if they were listening to this and thinking – Yeah, actually, that’s where I want to be in 10, 20 years. What would you advise them? Katie, maybe we’ll start with you.
00:48:34 Dr Katie Hore
I didn’t have a particular plan. So I think it’s fine to make a plan. It’s probably a good idea, especially if you don’t know quite what you’re doing. I mean, I kind of knew I needed a science job in Bristol. That was my plan at the time. And I went to the interview being, it was very short notice interview. So I sort of went, right, I’ll go along. It’ll be a fun practice. And we had a really great discussion about about plasma basically, about plasma physics and plasma chemistry. And I think the fact that I was really interested in it is probably what got me the job in the 1st place.
00:49:07 Dr Katie Hore
And then from there I sort of developed a bit of a plan about where I wanted to go in Oxford Instruments, but the things that really helped me progress my career were people gave me opportunities or offered opportunities and I really took them. If someone gives you a chance, go for it. They are giving it to you because they think you can do it. So you go and grab that chance and take the opportunities that come with it. And that allows you to develop the skills to perhaps plan a little bit more in the future or work out exactly what it is you do want to be doing in a few years time.
00:49:39 Prof Michele Barbour
Has that taken you? It’s great to say take opportunities, but has that taken you out of your comfort zone? Or is there a time that someone said, Hey, Katie, do you want to do this? And there’s part of you who thinks, can I?
00:49:48 Dr Katie Hore
Yeah, exactly. I mean, moving from a sort of very lab-based hands-on role to a strategy role was definitely, you know, – how do you form a strategy? How do you even come up with something so encompassing when what you have been doing previously has been primarily tactical and you know you’re planning projects that are three or four weeks long and suddenly it’s essentially you’ve been given a project which is 5 or 10 years long and you’ve got to say I want to be here in 10 years based on this probably slightly sparse evidence for a scientist. And I’m going to get there by doing these actions in the next three or four years. And then I think we’ll be doing this. And you have to sort of continually review that. But it was quite a big leap going from, yeah, you know, the customer wants this to where is the business going to be?
00:50:36 Prof Michele Barbour
I do think that sparsity of data is something that as scientists, we can find quite challenging actually, like particularly at that stage when you’re going from the more operational to the strategic. But nevertheless, you obviously did take that opportunity because that’s now part of your law. So I guess there’s something there about embracing things that are different, but backing yourself to do it.
00:50:58 Dr Katie Hore
Yeah, that make you feel uncomfortable and just acknowledging that sometimes you can’t go get more evidence. This is what you have. Make a decision based on it as best you can. And that is still a scientific thing to do because we do do it in the lab every day on a small scale because you can’t get every bit of evidence because you don’t have, you don’t have a synchrotron to get your exact crystal structure. You’ve got to go on what you’ve got from your small X-ray machine. And it’s the same just with a business decision as opposed to a what am I doing next tomorrow decision.
00:51:30 Prof Michele Barbour
Maybe more transferable skills than are apparent at the first glance, actually, because there’s still a scientific approach to that. And I guess there’s also a dimension of you set your plan, you sort of orchestrate your plan, but then you continually review and iterate, and if something isn’t going the way you expected, you adjust the plan going forward. So it’s that sort of iterative change of views based on new data as it emerges.
00:51:52 Dr Katie Hore
Yes, exactly. And give yourself credit for where you got it right, because you might iterate because something else has changed, but actually that decision at the time was the right one to make.
00:52:00 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, and learn from that.
00:52:08 Prof Michele Barbour
And then Martin, turning to you, I mean, a lot of our audience are researchers at different stages of their career. I do feel that increasingly researchers are seeing the benefit of working with companies for lots and lots and lots of different reasons. So what you’re doing is more than ever sort of in the spotlight as where people might want to go.
00:52:26 Prof Michele Barbour
What advice would you give to people much earlier in their research career, maybe at the PhD or A level, not just those that work directly with you, because clearly they’re already inspired. That’s largely probably why they’ve come to work with you. But researchers in other fields, how is this transferable?
00:52:41 Prof Martin Kuball
The core aspect is, I mean, find a mentor who is experienced. And that mentor doesn’t have to be at their own institution, can be somewhere completely else. Someone who you feel you can talk to get advice, because it’s not an it’s an open field, but doing PhD, it’s a pathway you know where you’re gonna end up. Postdoc is a pathway, where you know at some point when you have, for example, a faculty position, it’s an open field. You can go in any direction. And you don’t know whether you go left, right, or whichever way you’re going. So that’s actually, it’s great. It’s opportunities.
00:53:18 Prof Martin Kuball
But having somebody can bounce ideas off by going in the right direction, because the problem in academia sometimes is, as PhD student, one gets a lot of feedback. A supervisor hopefully should at least tell you’re doing right or wrong and you should do this and that. The more you go on, you get less feedback, or it’s indirect or very time delayed. So having a mentor where you can bounce ideas off is extremely valuable. And be open with that person. I’m struggling with this. Can I do this? Or do you think this is a great idea? Or maybe sometimes teaming up with a mentor or someone else, as young as I can, which is very hard to get funding initially. Once you have the first funding, it’s easier.
00:53:59 Prof Martin Kuball
Team up with someone who has experience and with us you not only learn how to write a grant to get money and get funding because in the end it’s that drives you unless you have research you need funding to do something and get that advice and one of the best advice is I got actually from a program monitor in the past and I didn’t get it at that point he told me I give you money when you have money and I thought I have no money I really need money why don’t you give me money because people who give you money need to justify it to a superior if it goes wrong or if it goes right. So if they know you have funding and you deliver, it’s much easier getting funding.
00:54:39 Prof Michele Barbour
Absolutely.
00:54:39 Prof Martin Kuball
Because if you work someone experienced who has that, you have that extra gain.
00:54:44 Prof Michele Barbour
They de-risk you in effect.
00:54:46 Prof Martin Kuball
Yes, and you learn at the same moment in time and you get good connection and just talk to people. Don’t try to lock yourself in and also the more you go in the career, I remember when I started my research group as I was one student down to five, and there’s always a risk people micromanaging students or something like this. And at some point you can’t micromanage people. I mean, A, it’s not very good to micromanage anyway, but if you micromanage 30 people, you turn insane.
00:55:12 Prof Michele Barbour
You don’t sleep, yeah.
00:55:13 Prof Martin Kuball
You turn insane, plus you turn the people you micromanage insane. So you need to find a positive way to engage, motivate people, because your success depends on with whom you work with, your students, your postdoc, other people, colleagues you work with. Motivate them, but don’t micromanage. Be positive. Don’t ignore problems. Address problems, because problems never go away. And there are some very good books people can read about. I’m happy to. People contact me, give them some suggestions I find helpful. Like if you have a team and there are 10 people in there and one performs extremely well, you have a job to give, there’s a risk to give that particular person the job. And if you do that all constantly, the person will be overloaded. It doesn’t help you. So learning how to manage a team effectively, motivate them positively is something else you can get advice from, either reading books or getting a mentor.
00:56:08 Prof Michele Barbour
And the reading books one, absolutely. And I would like some of those recommendations for sure, because I love reading a kind of book that helps with those sorts of skills. But the mentorship’s an interesting one. And I think it’s something that some academics really struggle with, because I think there’s a vulnerability dimension to having a mentor, because if you’re going to use them properly, you have to be able to say, I don’t know, I’m not sure, I think this has failed, I’m worried about, I’m afraid of, I messed this up, I made a wrong call, you know, back to your comments, Katie, about sort of the strategy goals is like, I thought this is going to work and it didn’t.
00:56:43 Prof Michele Barbour
So that’s something I feel that some academics, we sort of, we build our careers on our reputation for being good at stuff and knowing stuff and being an expert in a certain area. Being able to say, I’m not sure or I don’t know or this didn’t go right, I think can be quite hard for some people.
00:56:57 Prof Martin Kuball
It’s hard. I mean, vulnerability is hard and admitting I really messed this up. I don’t know this and some people struggle with this. Universities got better making formal mentorship schemes and sometimes good. But the individual needs to find the right person they’re happy to do that with. Someone telling you, talk to this, you’re not comfortable, you will never do that.
00:57:17 Prof Michele Barbour
No.
00:57:18 Prof Martin Kuball
Find a person, talker. And it can be also a friend or a colleague far away on the opposite side of the globe. It doesn’t have to be one at your institution. Maybe the institution has a formal scheme, but then find something else if you need that. But maybe the person who’s your official mentor is the right person. That’s even better.
00:57:38 Prof Michele Barbour
But I guess if you’re finding you’ve got a mentorship relationship and it’s not working.
00:57:41 Prof Martin Kuball
Find another one.
00:57:42 Prof Michele Barbour
Find another one.
00:57:42 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, absolutely.
00:57:43 Prof Martin Kuball
And it’s a good thing. I mean, people have experience and people who are successful, most of them, are actually happy sharing this experience.
00:57:53 Prof Michele Barbour
So it’s really clear from everything you’re saying that this is a national and an international environment, both your Rewire project and the other aspects of your work. But here we are in Bristol and you’ve both come to Bristol from other parts of the country and you’ve based yourself here. Is there something particular or special about the local ecosystem here for your work in semiconductors?
00:58:16 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, there’s a lot of semiconductor technology in Bristol. I mean, Bristol has actually a huge history in semiconductors. I mean, there was a company many, many years ago in INMOS, major company at that point doing mainly, many silicon. There’s still a lot of silicon technology in the Bristol area. A lot of compound semiconductors now as well. They’re end users. Take an example, Airbus is here. Great end users. A lot of tech companies north of here. Renishaw, very good companies who use semiconductors. Oxford Instruments Plaster Technology in Severn Beach. They’re all around Bristol, the area. We’re close to the South Wales cluster as well. There’s KLA. There is IQE there and numerous other companies. And I apologize if I missed it. There’s so much, it’s a melting pot of semiconductor compound semiconductor technology around Bristol. And that helps attracting good people. It helps getting the community together.
00:59:13 Prof Martin Kuball
There’s crossover to media and aspects which will use semiconductors and visualization 3D. We had some very nice discussion with some people which develop visualization approaches where we can maybe use them for training in semiconductor technologies. It’s true melting pot, Bristol.
00:59:30 Dr Katie Hore
Brilliant startups here. So with the university and with other, Bath, Exeter, UWE, it’s a lot of support for startups. So there are startups who are working on the semiconductor devices. So for example, quantum companies and their end user companies. There’s an electric aircraft startup, which is just a really exciting thing to think about. Can you replace short haul or very short, short hop journeys with an electric aircraft and therefore you’re reducing emissions and making it quieter and aircraft, which is good for using in built-up areas, essentially.
01:00:03 Prof Martin Kuball
There are also some plans actually building aircraft much longer distance electrification, where they’re going to plan to use electronics, which cools down to very, very low temperatures, which poses its own challenges. And Brussels has a lot of rich ecosystem and new aerospace development. I mean, think about Concorde was built in Bristol.
01:00:24 Prof Michele Barbour
Yeah, it goes back a long way to say, yeah. But you said lots of challenges, but from everything you’re saying, you thrive on the challenges. That’s what the Rewire project and your wider work is all about, is finding those challenges and those problems and finding ways to unpick and solve them. So challenges are your bread and butter, right?
01:00:40 Prof Martin Kuball
Absolutely.
01:00:41 Prof Michele Barbour
Wonderful.
01:00:43 Prof Michele Barbour
Where I like to kind of bring these interviews full circle is my final question, which I’ll put to each of you in turn, which is what exciting careers you have had and continue to have and you’ve both told me a little bit about where you started out.
01:00:57 Prof Michele Barbour
So if you were to have a, I don’t know, window back in time to young Katie, young Martin, and in a sense could have that conversation, what would they think about what you’re doing now? Would they be surprised? Would they be pleased? Would they be entirely accepting that’s exactly what you plan to do all along? And if you could give them any advice, what would it be? Katie, maybe we’ll ask you first.
01:01:18 Dr Katie Hore
I think I’d be a little bit surprised I’d moved from a hands-on technical role because I really enjoyed that. And I didn’t think I’d reach a point where I wanted to do something else, but I definitely did. There was a point where I thought, right, I like the clean room, but I’d like to get out of it and have a broader, more strategic contribution to a business or an organisation.
01:01:41 Dr Katie Hore
And so I think that would surprise me a little bit. And I think the advice I’d give myself is just take those opportunities when they come. Give something a go. You will be really surprised what you can achieve when you try.
01:01:54 Prof Michele Barbour
Wonderful, thanks.
01:01:55 Prof Martin Kuball
So the most exciting part I find, why are people successful? Resilience is an important part because people will have failures, but also the opportunities, they just pass by and whether you notice them or not, that makes the difference in people’s life.
01:02:12 Prof Michele Barbour
So there’s the taking the opportunities, but there’s even having to have your eyes open to notice those opportunities. And once you’ve noticing them is part of the challenge, isn’t it? And then being brave enough to take that leap and take that step.
01:02:24 Prof Martin Kuball
And as Katie, you said earlier, kind of, yeah, in a company structure, you had people approaching you and kind of saying, do you want to take that opportunity? But something they just pass by and no one doesn’t do.
01:02:33 Dr Katie Hore
And having a good mentor helps with that because they can, even if they’re not telling you, they make you more aware of what’s going on, I think, around you and just having a conversation about nothing in particular can actually help pull that out for you as, oh, okay, there’s something going on and I can contribute there.
01:02:50 Prof Michele Barbour
Martin, what about, what would you say to young Martin and what would he think of where you are now?
01:02:54 Prof Martin Kuball
Surprised.
01:02:56 Prof Michele Barbour
Surprised why? It sounds like you, of all the people I’ve spoken to, it feels like you were the one that had this plan.
01:03:01 Prof Martin Kuball
So my father is a chemist, so that’s a relation, what Katie’s background is, and I studied as a physicist, very fundamental physics and stuff, and did I ever think about they’re going to do some very applied stuff? No.
01:03:16 Prof Martin Kuball
I mean, I’d done a little bit during my studies in Germany with optical switches where it’s optical computing, but I was more interested actually understanding the underlying physics. And drifting or moving over to actually the engineering side, and the previous dean told me, or VC of the university told me, you’re in the physics department, but you’re not really a physicist. I don’t know which bracket to put to be at that border, connecting border between physics and engineering. If I give a talk in the physics department, they tell me, oh, it’s great to hear about engineering. If I talk in the engineering department, they tell me, it’s great to hear about physics. And it’s the same talk. It’s a challenge to be at the border between both, but it’s an opportunity because not many people can handle that.
01:04:03 Prof Martin Kuball
And I would have not expected anything up there. I would be proud of myself and also take the example of rewire so that it’s actually making a real impact on people, hopefully. And I think they’re already making some impact on employment and training also people up there, go in industry, go in academia. From all different nationalities around the globe, it’s just an exciting feel. But would I expect it to end up there? Absolutely not.
01:04:29 Prof Michele Barbour
And so what advice would you give to yourself?
01:04:31 Prof Martin Kuball
Look for opportunities. Have an open mind. Don’t be too fixed on your plan. Okay, you should have a plan, yes. But don’t be too fixed on that plan. You have to be there in 20 years. You won’t be there in 20 years. You’ll be somewhere else. Just keep that open mind.
01:04:49 Prof Michele Barbour
To have a plan, but have a flexible plan and be open to opportunities. That’s a mantra I can get behind. Have fun.
01:04:55 Prof Michele Barbour
Professor Martin Kuball and Dr. Katie Hore, I’m really, really grateful for your time, your insights, your wisdom and your advocacy for fun, which I think we can’t ever underestimate. Thank you very much indeed.
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