The man who never left University
"There' this saying about 3 sure-fire ways to lose money" declaresIan Smith with a chuckle. "The most enjoyable is on wine and women, the fastest is on gambling, but the most certain is on engineering research. So there you are.
"Jan Smith is City University's Professor of Applied Thermal Dynamics.It's a post he's held for over 50 years - an inordinate amount of time but testament to his evident commitment to shortening the odds on doing successful engineering research. He's a bashful and modest man who can't stand a compliment and is even less reluctant to give himself one. "I don't think I'm really a high scorer. It's just the long time I've been at it that's given me a chance," he professes demurely. Last year the institution held a small celebration of his tenure which, Smith admits, was "very nice". But he's still puzzled that 16 years after his retirement his contract continues to be renewed year after year.
Smith studies systems to capture energy from waste heat. In the past few years a project he and a colleague created has fuelled a quiet revolution in the power industry. That project - a collection of twisted interlocking pieces of metal that you'd be forgiven for mistaking as an elaborate, industrial looking sculpture - is the genesis of a new spin out company from the University called Heliex Power, who are tasked withcommercialising the technology that's already had a market valuation of over 5 billion dollars.
This is just one of many hints that Smith may genuinely be one of the humblest people you'll ever meet. A man of quiet passion and dedication, he speaks in a gruff lilt that dances around in rapid cadence. His sentences ebb and flow with the lifetime of stories that precedes them but there's not one hint of whimsy. Every sentence has a point. Every answer is chocked full of detail: who worked on this, for whom, where and when. And despite the rotating cast, backdrops and geographies, there's always one constant. In almost every story, Smith plays a bit-part. Lurking in the wings or even offstage altogether, he hardly ever takes centre stage choosing to credit others before himself. He's like Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen.
"Jan Smith is City University's Professor of Applied Thermal Dynamics.It's a post he's held for over 50 years - an inordinate amount of time but testament to his evident commitment to shortening the odds on doing successful engineering research. He's a bashful and modest man who can't stand a compliment and is even less reluctant to give himself one. "I don't think I'm really a high scorer. It's just the long time I've been at it that's given me a chance," he professes demurely. Last year the institution held a small celebration of his tenure which, Smith admits, was "very nice". But he's still puzzled that 16 years after his retirement his contract continues to be renewed year after year.
Smith studies systems to capture energy from waste heat. In the past few years a project he and a colleague created has fuelled a quiet revolution in the power industry. That project - a collection of twisted interlocking pieces of metal that you'd be forgiven for mistaking as an elaborate, industrial looking sculpture - is the genesis of a new spin out company from the University called Heliex Power, who are tasked withcommercialising the technology that's already had a market valuation of over 5 billion dollars.
This is just one of many hints that Smith may genuinely be one of the humblest people you'll ever meet. A man of quiet passion and dedication, he speaks in a gruff lilt that dances around in rapid cadence. His sentences ebb and flow with the lifetime of stories that precedes them but there's not one hint of whimsy. Every sentence has a point. Every answer is chocked full of detail: who worked on this, for whom, where and when. And despite the rotating cast, backdrops and geographies, there's always one constant. In almost every story, Smith plays a bit-part. Lurking in the wings or even offstage altogether, he hardly ever takes centre stage choosing to credit others before himself. He's like Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen.
"These days energy is often in the news. It's a wonder that our lights come on every time we flick a switch."
These days energy is often in the news. It's too expensive or we need more of it or we need different types of it. It's hard to transport and even harder to store and, if we took any of that in, it's a wonder that our lights come on every time we flick a switch. Energy is Smith's domain and he revels in it.But as ever, he never intended for it to be that way. "When I started I had no idea about energy really," he admits with a wry smile as he leads us through a maze of winding corridors towards the basement workshop where all the engineering design, building and testing happens.
Smith's clearly in his element wandering through the aircraft hanger size workshop and as he eases into his natural habitat, he becomes increasingly candid. "Truthfully I don't think the jet engine would have ever been developed in peace-time," he says provocatively, reflecting on his early career. "The efficiency of jet engines in those days was perhaps eight or ten per cent. I mean the main thing is you could make aeroplanes fly very fast which was good for the war. "I mean there are a huge number of people around the world trying to make machines somewhat like this [Smith gestures to a model of the Heliex Power twin screw compressors and expanders to recover power from low-grade steam. The problem in every case is that they're too expensive."
"At the end of the day we get obsessed with efficiency, but the real thing is cost. If you've got something with which you can kill people, you will get infinite money."
"The classic example of this is the handgun." From the 14th century thehandgun began to trickle into circulation but its form - a heavy, cumbersome instrument that required support and only took a shot every 2 minutes - was far from ideal. "Why did people persevere with it when they had the bow and arrow? Those arrows could penetrate armour at a hundred yards, so they were pretty lethal" Smith's point is not a nostalgic one. His answer? Because mastering the bow and arrow took decades of training, skill and strength and, frankly, people couldn't be bothered. It wasn't until three or four hundred years later that people actively began to select the handgun and the musket as a weapon of choice. The weapon's development had been a dogged and extremely inefficient pursuit of a grand vision that took hundreds of years to materialize.
"Now if you compare that with geothermal energy, there's no will.Governments won't spend on that level, and at least until they do, it won't happen because private investors aren't prepared to," Smith explains. That's a real shame because as Smith freely admits "just 1% of energy stored under the earth's crust would give more than enough power to meet all of the world's requirements indefinitely." That though, is another story.
Twin screwing compressors and expanders - the fruit of Smith's labour over the past few decades - don't have quite the level of impact of tapping into the earth's molten core, but a huge market valuation has provoked widespread and rapid interest from across the industry. The ever-pragmatic Smith and his colleagues are wary of writing the success story too soon though, "The company is still at a very early stage. We don't know if it will be successful. We don't know what's going to happen with these machines in several thousand hours will they wear out or fail, or will they prove to be as reliable as we hope? You know, it's an ongoing story."
But one thing is certain, the future of Heliex Power won't require too much of Smith. "I mean let's face it, what would a company want from me?" he asks, his deferential side rearing itself once more. "Putting a man of 75 to 80 as one of your directors, I mean people straight away get suspicious. You don't want old men in these things, you want young people.And I've got my role to play but it's not the primary one. They'll take it and they'll run with it and they'll do their thing," he says proudly. "One has to realise that I'm an old man and that sooner or later I'll have to stop. I'll be forced to stop by health reasons or I'll simply run out of usefulness or I'll just get fed up with it. But I wouldn't like to retire completely. The idea of going into retirement and going to the country and growing roses or something doesn't appeal to me."
Twin screwing compressors and expanders - the fruit of Smith's labour over the past few decades - don't have quite the level of impact of tapping into the earth's molten core, but a huge market valuation has provoked widespread and rapid interest from across the industry. The ever-pragmatic Smith and his colleagues are wary of writing the success story too soon though, "The company is still at a very early stage. We don't know if it will be successful. We don't know what's going to happen with these machines in several thousand hours will they wear out or fail, or will they prove to be as reliable as we hope? You know, it's an ongoing story."
But one thing is certain, the future of Heliex Power won't require too much of Smith. "I mean let's face it, what would a company want from me?" he asks, his deferential side rearing itself once more. "Putting a man of 75 to 80 as one of your directors, I mean people straight away get suspicious. You don't want old men in these things, you want young people.And I've got my role to play but it's not the primary one. They'll take it and they'll run with it and they'll do their thing," he says proudly. "One has to realise that I'm an old man and that sooner or later I'll have to stop. I'll be forced to stop by health reasons or I'll simply run out of usefulness or I'll just get fed up with it. But I wouldn't like to retire completely. The idea of going into retirement and going to the country and growing roses or something doesn't appeal to me."