20 November, 2012

Friend. Slave. Industrious.

Richard Friend
Sir Richard Friend
Professor Sir Richard Friend
(building a name for yourself)

As this 'blog is also a diary of my exciting life, I would like to tell you about a lecture I attended this evening. Professor Sir Richard Friend was speaking in the Department of Pharmacology on Tennis Court Road, Cambridge. The title of his lecture was, "Plastic Electronics", and was organised by the CUSS (Cambridge University Science Society) He has set up several companies over the years, and gave a general overview of the topics of Oled's, transistors and solar cells.

At one point he gave the opinion that some working in academia or looking to do a PhD would not choose to work with companies in this area (including companies he founded) because it was "slave labour"! Also, it was "cheap industrial research" and not "fundamental research". I think his point was these companies are just building on his original research, improving lifetime, efficiency, colours, process-ability and the like, rather than exploring totally new areas of SCIENCE.

There was both chemistry and physics terms in his talk and sometimes it got a bit confusing.

 Just realised he looks a bit like the former French president, Nicholas Sarkozy. Lol.

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