Q&As

Dr. Julian von Schleinitz is a former professional luge athlete and is currently the Head of Tech Excellence and AI Solutions in Financial Services at BMW Group. He also helps develop technology used to elevate the performance of Olympic athletes as part of BMW’s partnership with the German Luge, Skeleton and Bobsleigh Federation. Here, we talk to Dr. von Schleinitz about his transition from elite athlete to data scientist, the unique engineering and regulatory challenges he’s faced, and the future of artificial intelligence in ice track sports.

Professor Danielle Densley Tingley is an environmental engineer based at the University of Sheffield in the UK. Her research focusses on reducing the impact of the built environment on the planet using a number of strategies. Here, Dani shares her perspectives on the benefits of collaborative R&D in building a research career and in addressing grand challenges.

Daniel Perez Lopez is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at iPronics, a company dedicated to the development and commercialization of integrated programmable photonic circuits. His company focuses both on hardware advances for novel circuit and component architectures as well as software advances leading to the creation of fault-tolerant automated routines enabling advanced optical networking and processing, specially for AI infrastructure and intra-datacenter communications. As a young entrepreneur, Daniel shares with us his experiences and insights of the academia-industry transition and building a spin-out company from his university research.

Professor Inge Herrmann offers her insights into building commercialisable research projects and the transition into spin-off activity.

Dr. Robert Lang describes how he approaches building origami structures and offers thoughts on the future of origami research.

Dr. Emanuela Bosco describes her research into mechanical processes which affect the stability and longevity of historical artifacts.

Dr. Zhongyi Zhu shares his passion of solving challenging problems in designing elegant and efficient large-scale spatial structures.

Professor John Provis gives a perspective on cement and concrete technology, from ancient masterpieces to a vision of a sustainable future.