China Daily Global Edition (USA)
GOING TECH
Brent Little was unsure of his life in a foreign country when he decided to work in China. But the photonics expert from Canada soon found out that there were more opportunities than challenges. He is now the chief technical officer at QXP Technologies Inc, a Chinese company in Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, where it was founded in 2014 by the current CEO Cheng Dong, Little and some others from the field.
According to Little, his role in the company is to look at what technologies need to be developed and where the company is heading in the next few years.
“Technology always changes and you always want to be ahead of everybody else,” Little, 52, says.
Since the mid-1990s, he has researched photonic integration at top institutes including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland. He has published a dozen papers in journals.
In 2013, Cheng reached out to Little whom he had known earlier to ask him about launching the company, which was later supported by the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and received venture funds from Xi’an Zhongke Optics Mechanics Investment Holdings Ltd and others.
“I liked that idea and I thought about it a bit. That’s how it all began,” recalls Little, who was then thinking about new work after selling his own startup in the United States.
Photonics is the science and technology of light with applications in areas from advanced science to everyday A photonics expert from Canada helps to set up a company in the ancient city of Xi’an. reports. life. It is a new field that’s not dominated by any country yet, and China’s manufacturing infrastructure, which allows it to quickly mass-produce products, has a big advantage, he says.
Little had never been to China before and knew even less about Xi’an. But having decided to relocate in the hopes of establishing a suctle, cessful high-tech company using local resources, he found that the city offered more than he had expected.
A “complete line” created by both the central and local governments to support the commercialization of technological research results have benefited the company, he says.
Last year, the company got research grants worth 250 million yuan ($37.8 million).
In 2015, he became a member of the One Thousand Talents Plan for Foreign Experts program, which was initiated by the Chinese government in 2008 to encourage highlevel foreign experts to work in China by providing favorable conditions and funds.
“The program was definitely a big help in getting me to really establish myself here,” Little says.
He has adapted to the local life quickly, because he has lived in multicultural environments like New York. Nowadays, Little usually spends half of his time in China and half in the US. While in Xi’an, he spends most of his time on work and he enjoys the city where he can easily find coffee shops to sit and think. He occasionally also goes exploring the historical city.
“Making a product for other big companies, you have to be 100 percent ready, and just that last one percent can take you a long time,” explains Lit- who has both done research and product development in his career.
Thanks to the hard work of the research team led by him, the company has been able to develop several products in the past few years. He has witnessed the company growing from scratch to one with about 100 employees. The next goal is to make the company self-sustainable and further integrate with the overall tech environment.
Little says he faces few linguistic barriers because most of his Chinese colleagues can speak to him in English.
“When we ask him a simple question in an email, he explains things in detail which is really helpful,” says Chen Pengxin, a co-worker.
In 2016, Little was among a group of foreign experts invited to meet Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing.
In October, Little received the Friendship Award, the highest honor given by the Chinese government to foreigners who have made significant contribution to the country’s development.
“I feel honored for being recognized for the work we are doing in China, and that brings the ties even closer because it’s really a partnership,” Little says.
“I have some goals I want to achieve and China has some goals to achieve, and together we can make this all possible.”
But China, despite its rich resource of people with education, still needs foreign talent, with 10 or 20 years of experience in high-tech, to get things done faster, because the country entered the field in the last 10 years or so, he says.
Little wants to play a role in such efforts.