Marsden Fast Start Grant Heralds New Opportunities in Solar Power

Newly arrived from the University of Cambridge, Dr Nathaniel (Nate) Davis was awarded $300k over three years to discover how to make solar panels more efficient. While solar has huge potential, existing photovoltaic cells lose a lot of their energy as heat, increasing the cost of power generation. Nate’s aim was to exploit the physical properties of light particles, to split high energy photons and maximise their value.  His application back then read “Success would represent a massive improvement on the state-of-the-art and herald a new solar energy age.”

The Fast Start did just that for Dr Davis and his project, quickly opening up new opportunities. That year he was awarded a National Science Challenge grant for $200k and then a $1m Smart Ideas grant from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. He capped it off a year later with an $800k Rutherford Discovery Fellowship for research he was by then referring to as ‘Pushing the limits on renewable energy technology through hybrid organic/inorganic nanomaterials.’

Fast-forward to 2024 and having filed a patent authored by himself and a PhD student, arising directly from the initial Marsden Fast Start grant, Nate won a $10k Emerging Innovator Award from KiwiNet. At the KiwiNet awards dinner he met Venture Capital company Pacific Channel, which is now shepherding him through the pre-incubation stage of the Callaghan Deep Tech Incubator which supports the formation of spin-out companies.  

Nate says his journey is a classic example of fundamental research leading to commercialisation.

“It worked. It did what the Fast Start remit said it would. It gave me my first foot in the door. I left a fellowship (Oppenheimer Early Career Research Fellow) at Cambridge to come to New Zealand and landed at Victoria University of Wellington having to start fresh. But with the Fast Start I could get a student, and money to buy the chemicals and the lab time I needed to do this research. This has really helped demonstrate my leadership.”

Now being mentored by commercialisation experts across New Zealand, Nate is undertaking market research, preparing a business plan and conducting cost analysis. He’s hoping to start his new company in June. As well as the business success, Nate has published 30 papers since 2020 and supervised six PhD students through to graduation. Not a bad return for New Zealand from a guy who turned up with little money in his pocket, but a bright mind and a determined head on his shoulders.