Mike Hardy

Mike Hardy is an interdisciplinary scientist who completed his PhD in Physics at Queen’s University Belfast, collaborating with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), later, Airbus Group Innovations (Munich, DE). His research centres around spectroscopy – investigating different materials with light to detect subtle changes – which he has applied in the areas of healthcare, food safety, and improvised explosives detection. Mike is also a graduate from the University of Birmingham’s Medici Enterprise Training Programme, and has a keen interest in the set-up of interdisciplinary research centres, operating from fundamental discovery to commercial products. He has also worked alongside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (Birmingham, UK), and a range of photonics-based technology companies in Northern Ireland as part of the Smart Nano NI Project ( smartnanoni.com ). Mike has contributed to product development with Silmeco ApS (Denmark) and Safety Spect Inc. (USA) on sensor chips and portable spectroscopic devices, respectively. Mike is currently an enthusiastic advocate for Photonics technologies– the science of light-based innovations – within NI, wider UK and Ireland, and beyond. He is always keen to talk to any interested industry partners who want to find out more about photonics and possible implementations. His academic collaborators include the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, the University of North Dakota, Ulster University, Almaty Technological University, and the Danish Technical University. He has recently been linking up with research institutions in Japan and South Korea, and keen to form strong interdisciplinary partnerships for the purpose of driving innovation across the full technology readiness level scale.