• Question: Did ye ever invent anything important?

    Asked by emmamurphy25 to Ahmed, Francesca, George, James, Nitheen on 7 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: James Sullivan

      James Sullivan answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      Hi Emma,
      Thanks for this question.
      All the research we do could be considered invention. Mostly it would be developing new catalysts for important processes (e.g. the removal of pollutants from car exhausts), or trying to understand how current catalysts work, but we also try to develop new processes (such as reactions to convert grass into gasoline).
      I haven’t made my first million from any invention yet – but you’d never know, there could be something around the corner.

    • Photo: Francesca Paradisi

      Francesca Paradisi answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      I would you measure how important something is? I think unless you make something that people buy and you make a lot of money from it, it it difficult to establish if you have invented anything important, but I can try and explain one thing I have done that I think it was important for the scientific community (probably not for the average Joe and many others!). I developed a new way to produce an enzyme that many researchers uses in their projects. Since I published the results, I got a lot of interest in that system and I got many requests to mail it to their lab so they could use it! While I did not get money for it, I got the recognition that what I had done was very useful!

    • Photo: George Dowson

      George Dowson answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      I have a patent that I developed during my PhD which makes me an “inventor”. The work was focused on generating petrol from biomass sources which I consider “important” but it really depends on what your priorities are!

    • Photo: Ahmed Osman

      Ahmed Osman answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Hi emmamurphy25,
      Yes I made a new catalyst for the production of the new clean fuel (DME) and we are going to submit the patent soon, if this project will be applied in Northern Ireland I will a great change and make the life easy (I promise)
      thanks

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