My ICURe Journey!

Innovation to Commercialisation of Universcity Research (ICURe) was a fantastic journey for me, travelling 32294 miles across 3 continents, to contact experts from 12 different countries to conduct a broad and rigorous market survey as well as new product validation.

The journey started from Glasgow at the ICURe-12 bootcamp on 6th January 2018, and ended at the board of directors in London for the final Options Roundabout presentation on 30th March 2018.

This ICURe journey enabled me to speak to end-users of laser technology, manufacturers, integrators of lasers systems and stakeholders, spanning from areas such as optics technology laser beam delivery, to laser-based manufacturing, namely: laser shock peening, laser marking, laser cutting of diamond, laser polishing, laser cleaning, and additive manufacturing.

I was also fortunate to have had discussions with top experts, and people from various position in the hierarchy ranging from company MD’s to technicians on shop-floor of the laser manufacturers, optical engineering, materials processing etc. to understand their problems, needs in order to provide an industrial solution that is beyond this technology spanning impacting the wider laser processing community.

I am now forming a team of academics and industrialists to not only take this work forward but also make an valuable impacts of the laser-based technology in various areas in laser materials processing.

A visist to the Photonics World of China, Shanghai in mid-March 2018 speak to various experts in the Laser industry.

A random stroll to Nanjing Lu and to the Bund above..

Visit to SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco in late January 2018.

Visiting Jiangshu University to with Xiaojun Shen (Coventry University) to meet some key academics and their Laser Shock Peening facility on 20th March 2018.

Exploring the diamond cutting industry in India which is heavily aided and dependent on laser technology. What an experience that was...

Due to confidential nature of this ICURe project, I am unable to discuss a lot of technical details, in addition, it was an absolute pity that I lost my phone on the way back from the final day of the project (options roundabout). Unfortunately, some of the key information was not backed which meant that I lost a lot of useful picture of my full ICURe journey – but we live and learn and sure I did!