AN engineer at Scottish spacecraft maker Clyde Space has won an £80,000 fellowship to explore new technologies and business development opportunities.
Stephen Greenland, a systems engineer at the Glasgow business, secured one of only eight annual awards from the Industrial Fellowship by The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.
The money helps to pay for tuition, travel expenses and the salary of the fellow to allow them to study for a PhD qualification while still working in industry.
Previous recipients of funding from the educational trust, established by Prince Albert and Queen Victoria to stage the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Crystal Palace, include Noble Prize winning physicist Professor Peter Higgs.
Mr Greenland was jointly responsible for the proposal and implementation of Clyde Space's CubeSat programme.
The UKube-1 satellite is scheduled to be launched into the atmosphere in February next year from a Russian rocket.
The fellowship award is to allow Mr Greenland to further his work on nanosatellites.
The aim is to identify and develop niche business opportunities in areas involving quantum technology, biosciences and imaging.
The Glasgow-born Mr Greenland studied avionics and aerospace systems engineering in Manchester before going on to specialise in space systems at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire. He has also spent time at Tokyo University.
He joined Strathclyde University in 2008 as part of a knowledge transfer agreement with Clyde Space to develop space systems capability for small craft.
He said: "It is time to explore the opportunities this brings and maximise return for the company and UK economy."
The ambitions of Mr Greenland are being fully supported by Clyde Space chief executive Craig Clark.
Mr Clark said: "The Industrial Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 is a fantastic scheme as it opens the opportunity to conduct long-term research and capability expansion that we would not normally be able to undertake at Clyde Space.
"Stephen's contribution to the UKube-1 mission has been outstanding and he fully deserves to be selected for the fellowship and I would like to thank and congratulate Stephen for his hard work on the project.
"The fellowship will focus on innovative approaches to enabling advanced CubeSat and nanosatellite missions within the UK and beyond and will also enable Clyde Space and the University of Strathclyde to continue to work together in advancing the field of miniature space."
In October this year Clyde Space said it was on course to book record half-year turnover of £1.65 million, up from £600,000 in 2012. Mr Clark also indicated the company had been trading profitably since the start of its financial year in May.
Bernard Taylor, the Royal Commission chairman, said: "The Commission aims to encourage innovation across the breadth of British industry and funds the development of profitable and patented technologies.
"We congratulate Stephen on his success so far and look forward to following his success in the future."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article