Piter Miedema is a project manager at Uniresearch and is involved in both the dissemination activities of the Episode project as well as the daily (administrative) management of the project.
What was your original motivation to pursue a career in innovation, e.g., become a researcher/project manager?
Trained as a physical chemist, I had a research career of almost 10 years in fundamental science, focused on x-ray method development at synchrotrons and x-ray free electron lasers. In the last years of that work I noticed that I liked more the method testing work, i.e., using the improved method on the study of applications. So about 4 years ago I made the shift to a job to get more involved in innovative work beyond TRL1-2 and I became a project manager at Uniresearch involved in projects that are going beyond fundamental science.
What is your (main) research area today?
Besides being the dissemination manager for Episode, the other projects and proposals that I (support) managing are all related to renewable energy (hydrogen technology, advanced batteries and solar R&D).
What is the main focus of you and your team in Episode?
Our team typically focuses on (support in) the daily management of the project as well as on overseeing and steering the communication, dissemination and preliminary exploitation activities.
From all your activities within the project, what are you the most proud of/keen of to share with the public?
I am very happy that we are working with some key partners in this project as a follow-up to an old R&D project (SIMBA) to make the step to higher TRL, i.e., dedicated towards applications, where we started together with these partners the whole process from project development, proposal writing and now the actual project implementation.
How do you expect the Episode results will impact your organisation and the battery sector in Europe?
Uniresearch likes to help the Episode partners to establish their goals and targets within the project with regards to renewable energy production as well as with the (testing of) quality of the battery modules and I hope that the partners consider us for assistance with the project management and / or dissemination activities in follow-up projects.
