Technology Scotland joined the UK's engineering design community at Engineering Design Show (EDS), held on 7-8 October at Coventry Building Society Arena, bringing Scotland's semiconductor expertise and commercialisation challenges to a wider engineering audience.
With conference streams covering electronic, embedded and mechanical design, the programme explored both practical engineering challenges and the wider changes shaping the profession. Topics included artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing and the evolving relationship between technology, skills and design decisions.
Elena Kniazeva, Senior Programme Manager for Critical Technologies, delivered a talk titled "Beyond the Prototype: Taking Semiconductor Innovation from R&D to Commercial Reality" as part of the New Electronics conference programme.
The presentation explored a central challenge for emerging semiconductor technologies: a successful laboratory demonstration is only the beginning of the journey towards a reliable, scalable commercial product. As devices move beyond R&D, engineering challenges increasingly arise at the interfaces between fabrication, packaging, thermal management, electronics, testing and qualification.
Alongside examples and insights of organisations from Scotland's Critical Technologies Supercluster, Elena reflected on her own experience as an R&D engineer. Drawing on examples from her research, she explored how technical everyday choices made during development can influence manufacturability and commercial viability, and why device performance needs to be considered alongside the practical requirements of producing and integrating a technology.
A special thank you to our members Neuranics, Alter, STMicroelectronics, Vector Photonics, KNT, NMIS and JWNC for sharing their valuable insights. Their contributions enriched the presentation with practical knowledge and industry perspectives, showcasing Scotland's capabilities and expertise through real-world examples and lessons learned.
Beyond her own presentation, Elena attended sessions exploring intellectual property protection and commercialisation, including the choices businesses face around patents and trade secrets. Talks on AI also raised questions about the future role of engineers and designers: how to make effective use of increasingly capable tools while retaining the human judgement, creativity and expertise essential to good design.
Another highlight was the robotics panel, featuring speaker from The National Robotarium, Airbus, the Manufacturing Technology Centre and Starship Technologies. The discussion brought a strong focus on future industry needs and what must change to help robotics move from technical possibility to wider deployment.