Day in the Life of Dr Robin Francis, CEO of M-Spin
Imperial College London spin-out M-Spin is pushing the boundaries of porous materials technology to build a greener future for us all. Co-founded by Dr Robin Francis with Professor Nigel Brandon and Dr Mengzheng Ouyang from Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering, the company is set to transform electrochemical applications with its ultra-high surface area metallic mats – revolutionising the way energy is produced, stored and used in electrolysers, fuel cells, and batteries.
The materials, created from fibres just hundreds of nanometres in diameter, offer a surface area up to 1,000 times greater than the conventional metallic foams available today. With the ability to be mechanically processed, customised for different applications and integrated into existing electrolyser architectures, these transformative materials deliver a highly attractive alternative to conventional porous metals.
While the tech itself is groundbreaking, its real-world performance is even more remarkable. In water electrolysis, M-Spin’s nanofibre-based metallic mats have demonstrated up to fivefold increases in hydrogen production rate, and around 10 per cent higher efficiency – leading to projected cost reductions of up to 30 per cent in green hydrogen generation.
Earlier his summer, to meet growing industry interest in its advanced materials innovation, M-Spin opened its pilot lab at Imperial Incubator in Scale Space White City, creating the optimal launchpad to scale its pivotal technology for energy transition.
For our Day in the Life feature, M-Spin’s Founding CEO Dr Robin Francis offers an illuminating insight into his role at this trailblazing start-up. He also shares why M-Spin’s cleantech mission is driven by the pursuit of balancing performance and cost-effectiveness – decarbonising our world in ways that are both better and cheaper.
M-Spin’s laboratory at Imperial Incubator in the White City Campus
- What is a typical day like for you?
Lots of meetings, of course! Some internal – such as priority setting, technical reviews and so on – but mostly external meetings with customers, partners, and investors.
One thing I try to do is to get the more “admin-y”/near-term stuff out of the way in the morning, so that I can carve out some time in the afternoon to think about the big picture strategic stuff. The challenge in any job is to not let the urgent crowd out the important, so I think it’s good practise to try to set aside a couple of hours every day where you turn off the emails, decline meetings if possible, and give yourself time to think. I often don’t fully succeed in this, but it’s good to try!
- What do you love about working in WCID – in three words?
Dynamism, community, collaboration.
- Why did you choose to be located here?
It was a combination of factors. There was a lab available at Scale Space which exactly fitted our needs and had all the infrastructure we needed to pretty much get started straight away. As a start-up, time is of the essence, so that fast start was a huge benefit for us.
Secondly, being part of the Imperial ecosystem offers many advantages in terms of networks, access to facilities and support. Finally, while London is obviously not the cheapest location, it’s a global Tier 1 city with (generally!) good infrastructure, a dynamic economy, and amazing international connectivity. This is a massive advantage in terms of meetings with customers, partners, and investors.
- What does ‘innovation’ mean to you and how does your company contribute to it?
For us it’s about applying knowledge to find new ways of improving our and our customer’s products in a commercially viable way. All of the M-Spin team has pretty extensive formal training in science, but it’s no good with coming up with solutions that might work in an academic environment if they’re never going to work at commercial scale. So even when we are deep in “technology” mode, we’re all careful to keep at least one eye on how commercially viable our ideas are.
- What are you most proud of in your current role?
We’re only about a year old as a company, yet we already have a fully operational pilot production facility at Scale Space which is supplying test materials to a number of customers. I think that’s not bad progress!
- What is the hot topic in your business?
We are a cleantech company, and I think the really big question in cleantech is “how we decarbonise our economy as rapidly as possible, but in an economically and socially viable way?”.
I think (pretty much) everyone recognises the need to decarbonise. But many people also have significant concerns about the cost of doing this, and particularly whether that cost will be shared equitably. The best way of addressing this dilemma is to develop tech which is both better and cheaper, and that’s what we are focused on in M-Spin. For example, our products for electrolysers can reduce the cost of hydrogen produced using renewable energy (“green hydrogen”) by 20–30%. This is a huge step to making green hydrogen competitive with conventional fossil fuel routes to hydrogen (which generate massive CO2 emissions – more than the total of UK and French emissions combined).
- What’s the best business advice you have for people looking to break into your specialism?
If you want to be in deeptech or cleantech I think there’s no substitute for getting a really good technical grounding in a relevant subject. But after that it’s more about enthusiasm and a genuine passion for the subject.
And learn from others! When you start your career you’re going to be pretty green, particularly from a commercial perspective if you come from a techy background. So really listen to how experienced people with different experience and skillsets think about things. If you can combine a solid a technical grounding with commercial acumen that’s pretty powerful.
Finaly, it’s possibly a controversial thing to say, but I think things like MBAs are of limited value – most of it is just common sense wrapped up in multiple layers of jargon. Just pick it up from those around you!
- What would Plan B have been on the career front?
I didn’t ever plan my career, so I never had a Plan B as such. But I really like driving so maybe I could be a taxi driver. I’ve always liked the idea of being a postman too, but I’m not really a morning person so maybe a taxi driver is a better bet!