FCDT student Matt Thomas was invited to give a talk on fusion at the London Science Museum to global manufacturing company GKN. GKN supply 90% of the world’s automotive parts to tier one companies such as Airbus and BMW. The talk was part of GKN’s Future Thinkers conference and was attended by their CEO and board of directors along with a select number of their brightest employees from around the world. These employees, most of whom have STEM subject PhDs, which make up a department dedicated to thinking about how the business can adapt to future technologies and ideas. Matt’s talk aimed to answer 4 key questions on nuclear fusion that the company wished to be answered. Prior to the talk Matt worked closely with staff from GKN to develop the presentation. The full talk can be watched in the embedded youtube video.
Matt said of the experience, “..it was very rewarding in many ways. Firstly it was very interesting to hear points of view from the industry perspective on fusion and secondly I gained a quite a lot of good networking connections from GKN. The experience has inspired me to become more involved in outreach to both educate the general public on the prospect of nuclear fusion and to encourage more young people to choose physics at higher education. Since the talk at GKN I have given many more talks at colleges and 6th forms in Lancashire and in Yorkshire. I have also given a talk at a national NHS cellular pathology conference.”