• School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University

      B4 7ET Birmingham

      United Kingdom

    Personal profile

    Membership of Professional Bodies

    Member of the Institute of Physics.

    Chartered Physicist

    Member member of the  International Society for Optics and Photonic  (SPIE)

    Employment

    2014- Aston Institute for Photonic Technologies

    2010-2014  Chief Scientist L-3 TRL, Tewkesbury.

    2001-2009 Technical leader, QinetiQ, Malvern

    1998-2001 Senior Scientist, DERA, Portsmouth

    1994-1998 Post doctroal research fellow, Birmingham University 

    Research Interests

    Laser Detection

    Free space optical communications

    Optical spectroscopy

    Non-Mechanical beam steering

    Novel encoding schemes

    Biography

    I have spent meany years doing research in industry, looking across the gap at academics and now I have joined them. However bad you think things get in academia, at least the hierachies of the organisation understand that  research is the bedrock of what universities do. In industry research costs money and you always have to justify what you do to people who have no concept, why you spend money that someone else sees as their profit - even when someone else has funded it. There is a different mindset in industry. What appears to be a small amount of funding to a university, can be a major investment for a small company. The misalignment between academia and industry is something I hope I can start to influence as I think academia to industry relations will become more important (to academia) in the coming years.

    Biography

     Phone number:  0121 204 5311

     Email:  d.benton@aston.ac.uk

     Room : N613

     @DrDavidBenton  on Twitter

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