he PV group at SPECIFIC is delighted to report the recent and richly deserved promotion of Matt Carnie and Matthew Davies to Associate Professor. Their academic elevation has come on the back of some groundbreaking research in the areas of photochemistry and electrochemistry of solar cells, feeding into the SPECIFIC aim of printed photovoltaics.
Matt Carnie started his academic career with an engineering doctorate on weathering of polymers for Tata which later morphed into how those polymers might be used to protect solar cells. A Swansea University lifer, Matt was elevated to an academic post following 3 years as a post-doc researcher, joining the academic staff in 2014. Soon thereafter he set about about expanding capabilities at the University including the development of measurement techniques, thermoelectric and tandem solar cells, winning research grants in all those areas. Although originally a Swansea University graduate, Matthew Davies rejoined Swansea University as a post-doc from Bangor University. With both a passion and expertise in photochemistry, Matthew set about developing new capabilities in the photochemical measurements systems for solar cells. Alongside pushing the capabilities of the group deeper into more fundamental understanding of the devices he also led major projects on the delivery of delocalised power and buildings as power stations in Africa, visiting both South Africa and Zambia regularly. SPECIFIC is proud to have both Matt and Matthew as part of the team and wishes them a hearty congratulations for their promotions!
Also to note is the advancement of Dr Trystan Watson to Professor Watson. Trystan started out in the chemistry department at Swansea University obtaining a degree in chemistry, he then obtained his EngD within the College of Engineering by examining corrosion processes on packaging steels utilising the Scanning Vibrating Electrode Technique.
He then worked within industry for a period, acting as a process technologist and theme leader within the Process technology group. However the lure of academia was strong and in 2007 Trystan return to the College of engineering to work with Dave Worsley on photovoltaics, a topic on which he would build a successful career. Over the last 10 years Trystan has worked tirelessly to improve his and others understanding of the production processes and factors limiting the large scale adoption of printed PV. With the advent of the Perovskite solar cell a key strategic decision was made to jump on this latest discovery and position the group examining the scale up challenges and process bottlenecks associated with this particular architecture. Trystan and the group quickly gained a reputation within the PV community, for identifying solutions to manufacturing challenges, publishing quality research papers and for having a good time networking at conferences. All this resulting in a career of in excess of 80 publications and almost 1000 citations, along with helping to develop future Swansea academics and researchers. SPECIFIC is extremely grateful to Trystan for his hard work and enthusiasm over the last 10 years and offers huge congratulations on his promotion, it is extremely well deserved.
