Dr. Morrison’s first industrial role was with photonics company, Bookham Technology (Oclaro), developing epitaxy (MOVPE) processes for III-V semiconductor LASERs. In 2004, she returned to Newcastle to work on the technology development of silicon devices (0.13um CMOS), for Atmel North Tyneside. These roles provided her with a firm foundation in volume manufacturing and strengthened her materials process and characterisation knowledge.

The opportunity to work in the renewable energy sector arose in 2008, when Dr. Morrison joined the Photovoltaic (PV) Division of the National Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) as a commercial researcher in silicon solar cells and modules. The PV division of Narec later became a private company, where she became Head of Research, managing and delivering a £2.2 million portfolio of funded (EU and UK) and commercial research projects. Through extensive networking and skillful competitive bid writing, she secured over £1.5 million in research funding for several new projects.

Her scientific career in the semiconductor and photovoltaic industries, has allowed Dr. Morrison to gain both technical and management experience in research, technology development and manufacturing. She has an in depth understanding UK and EU research grant application processes and project management. Dr. Morrison is a Project Monitoring Officer (PMO) for Innovate UK and regularly works as an expert under contract with the European Commission supporting Horizon 2020 evaluations.

Prof Clare Watt is a space plasma physicist who specializes in space weather at Earth. She leads projects to study the physics of Earth’s radiation belts through numerical simulation, analysis of spacecraft observations and theory.

She graduated with a PhD in space plasma physics from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 2002, during which time she created a new plasma simulation model at the British Antarctic Survey. Her work then took her to University of Alberta in Canada, where she created numerical models of acceleration of auroral electrons in polar regions. Clare’s focus is kinetic plasma physics as applied to space plasma environments. Largely this takes the form of wave-particle interactions, where charged particles in the collisionless environment of space interact with electromagnetic waves. This can result in energisation or scattering, and can be used to explain auroral processes, energisation of Earth’s radiation belts and even potentially the trigger for the explosive energy release in a magnetospheric substorm.

She has led large STFC Consolidated Grants (2015-2020) to study solar system physics, and is currently part of two large space weather consortia: Rad-Sat (2017-2021) which makes improvements to the modelling of acceleration, transport and loss of radiation belt electrons to protect satellites from space weather, and Sat-Risk (2020-2023) whose goal is to develop a real-time system to forecast radiation exposure to satellites for a range of different orbits, and quantify the risk of damage or degradation.

Prof Watt currently serves on advisory groups for national and international space agencies,  including the UK Space Agency. She is Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society and has contributed to multiple grant review panels.  In her own academic department,  she currently serves as the Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange.