Tech firm warning on free movement
Photonics firm Kaiam says the industry relies on international talent to thrive
TECHNOLOGY firm Kaiam Corporation has warned that an end to free movement of people following the UK’s exit from the EU would pose serious challenges for Scotland’s high technology sector, which relies on talent from around the world to keep it at the forefront of research and development.
The Californian company, which employs around 450 people at its base in Livingston, is involved in the highly specialised photonics industry, for which it carries out research and development as well as manufacturing in Scotland.
Company spokesman Derek Milne said the business has strong links with universities, including Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde that have “an excellent reputation for research within the high-technology sector”.
Those links have seen Kaiam offer industrial placements to undergraduate and post-graduate students from all three universities in addition to taking on interns each summer. The business will take on its first industrial fellow in January in the shape of Italian national and University of Strathclyde PhD student Giuseppe Cantarella.
Mr Milne said such placements would be put in jeopardy if restrictions on the free movement of people stopped international talent coming to Scotland’s universities.
“We’ve been doing internships and graduate recruitment and we’re getting more involved in taking PhD students on to help develop our leading-edge technology,” he said. “It’s important that universities have close ties to industry because they have got to make sure that graduates have the skills that make them fit for a role within industry.
“Not all the students, graduates or interns we take on are from Scotland. We do have them and some have been hugely successful within our company but there are a number of foreign students that we would offer positions to.
“At this moment in time if you were to put a line in the sand and say no freedom of movement that would be challenging.”
Mr Milne noted that Scottish universities have no problem in attracting students from around the globe because “the credibility of those institutions is high, particularly in sciences and technology”.
“If you go to trade shows or technology fairs and see the diversity of people who are there you recognise that we’ve got a research culture in Scotland that is attractive to people,” he said. “People do come here and they’ve got lots to offer.”
Mr Cantarella, who is coming to Kaiam via the company’s industrial partner SU2P, agreed, saying that despite how much he loves Italy “it is not ready yet to embrace the progress and innovation coming from all our young minds”.
“This is why, together with some of my best friends and colleagues, we left our hometown and our families searching for personal fulfilment,” he said.
“Where I chose to head was Glasgow and once there I quickly realised that I had made the best choice ever.
“Both the experience of living abroad and the chance of a PhD in such a new and exciting field like integrated photonics, couldn’t be better.”
Mr Cantarella said that SU2P, a collaboration between the universities of Strathclyde, St Andrews, Heriot-Watt, Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland and Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology in the US, had played “a very important role in my PhD experience”.
“This amazing organisation capitalises on leading research in the photonics sector,” he said.
“It uses symposia and continuous networking between UK and US universities with the aim of creating new commercial opportunities. The industrial fellowship scheme, for example, allows you to be an active part of this university and industry cooperation by collaborating with others to create leading technologies.
“The SU2P fellowship seemed the perfect opportunity for me to take a next step on my journey and I will always be grateful to Kaiam in particular for believing in my dreams and my passion.”
Silicon Valley business Kaiam was set up in 2010 by Iranian-born and US-educated chief executive Dr Bardia Pezeshki.
Kaiam moved into the Scottish market in 2013, when it bought out predecessor company Kymata, which started out as a spinout from the universities of Glasgow and Southampton. Dr Pezeshki relocated from the US to Edinburgh last year.