Young Engineer of the Year

Dr Robert Hoye (2016) has been named a Young Engineer of the Year by the Royal Academy of Engineering. This is the Academy’s most competitive prize and is given to five individuals who have had an outstanding impact in their fields at an early stage in their careers. Since October 2016, Dr Hoye has been a Junior Research Fellow at the College, working on developing optoelectronic materials for clean energy conversion at scale. During his PhD (2012–2014), he developed a new reactor that prints semiconducting oxides two orders of magnitude faster than industrystandard methods but with the same quality. This work was awarded a prize for best thesis and has since attracted attention from companies. Afterwards,

Dr Robert Hoye at the Worshipful Company of Engineers Dinner.

he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2015–2016), working on developing bismuth-based compounds for photovoltaics that could tolerate defects, enabling them to achieve high performance when processed at low cost. These new ideas and materials were recognised by the US Department of Energy and awarded a patent. His work has also led to grants awarded in the US and UK worth a total of £1.5m. To date, his publications have gained over 1,100 citations and, in 2017, five of his papers were ranked in the top 1% by Web of Science.

Dr Hoye received his award at a ceremony held at the Tower of London this June. In attendance were HRH The Princess Royal and HRH the Duke of Kent, who met and congratulated the award-winners. The award was also presented by its sponsors, the Worshipful Company of Engineers, at their dinner at the Plasterers’ Hall in London this June.

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