GE Europe: Research in action

GE’s Munich research centre.

Let me start out with the relationship, because I think that’s probably the easiest to explain. The campus here is a research campus – it’s not exactly the campus of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). On the research campus you have Max Planck institutes, you have the Research Reactor and Neutron Source, you have the European Southern Observatory, and you even have other companies. We are the only bigger company on campus.

We do work together with TUM with a framework contract that we have set up, which defines all kinds of collaborations that are conceivable. This ranges from funding long-range projects without a specific commercial interest, to confidential contract research that looks at a specific device we need, or a specific technology we have, and where they help us maybe understand the attributes of this technology, or maybe also its performance in a specific setting. They may just have unique capabilities.  

We wouldn’t be here if the relationship [between us and nearby research partners] hadn’t been considered a critical one. Now, it takes time to develop that. You don’t start on Day One and say, “Here is my X million budget and I’m going to start funding all kinds of research.” First [you need to have] a little bit of patience and, in a smart process, identify the sweet spots for collaboration: What is the university particularly strong at, Where do they want to develop? There may be areas they are good at but they feel there is little future in [them] and they want to move into new areas.

And the things that we will be doing here in Munich we are also of course changing to a certain extent from when started, to today. The portfolio of projects we work on is also slightly adjusted.

So I would say it takes a while to find out the sweet spots for collaboration, but once we have that identified there are multiple opportunities. One […] is the unique capabilities in terms of terms of instruments and testing equipment. Or you may have large energy systems available. You may have specific diagnostic instruments to look at surfaces. You may have other labs where specific chemical characterisation or materials characterisation may be done that we don’t want to keep in house and we don’t want to grow here. The company may have it somewhere, but for our research on site it is critical to have, in many cases the university may be able to provide that element of hardware that we badly need.  

So, element number one, share infrastructure, or use infrastructure. Element number two, which means a lot to the university and to us is working to develop people. We have a student programme that starts out with internships. We offer topics so people can do their Masters’ thesis. Then you go all the way to a PhD programme, where people stay with us and the university for several years, do their graduate studies and complete an extensive research project.

That’s something which benefits the university and us at the same time. For us it’s a strong pipeline, we get access to the best and most motivated people. For the university, of course, it makes them also more attractive as a place to do graduate studies – since even in Germany (hard to believe!) even in Germany, there is increasing competition among the different universities in the country for the smartest brains and the best students.

The third element is that at the university, in some disciplines you have experts that have developed knowledge, and have a distinguished career in areas like chemistry, or solid-phase physics, or energy systems, or maybe controls and instrumentation. These are people we want to talk to, and also use them as consultants. We do have individual research contracts with specific scholars and researchers that help us – on a commercial basis for them and the university – in specific areas where we may be lacking an individual element of knowledge.

At the same time, whenever you are lacking something you are wondering, “Should I build this in-house?” I think where the whole concept of open innovation and of open partnerships comes in is when you think, “I’m pretty sure that I will need this [knowledge] only for a limited period of time. Once I have that problem under control I may no longer need that expertise in-house.” That’s when you go out and try to look for people who have that knowledge already […], tap into that and then once it’s done you’re OK with that and then you move on with your other stuff.

Are you developing similar relationships with other universities in Europe?

On a slow rhythm, yes. But most is still TU Munich. We do have relationships when it comes to student projects and small to mid-sized research projects with other universities in Germany and the neighbouring countries, in particular Austria and also Switzerland. We are now having more contact into France and the UK as well. Partly in these cases it is a joint effort between us and the business unit.

For example, in the UK you may have [GE] Healthcare as a strong business unit with a strong and long-standing research presence in the UK. Or [GE] Aviation Systems [formerly Smiths Aerospace]. They do have strong links to certain universities, so we will try to work together with those universities, since we can offer some added value to the business, and the business is at the same time giving us direct access to some of the key players at those universities. So we are moving in that direction, but I don’t think we are anywhere as far as we are with TU Munich at this point.

How many people work in the centre in Munich?

Today about 150 people of which about 130 work in research. This includes the students we have, the PhD candidates, or people that spend sabbaticals with us, professors from universities who come to us for an industry sabbatical.

I think we can grow, given the facilities we have here today, without extending the facilities, could probably house approximately 180 scientists. There is room to increase numbers by maybe about 40 or 50, and probably about a third of that we will grow this year. If we want to go beyond that, we may have to build an extension here. That may become necessary. There are no plans today, but the space would be available.

What are the principal themes that you cover in research at Munich?

Energy, and oil and gas are very important for us. These are two areas which we focus on – not the only ones, but two areas which are important. In those areas, we are looking at the mechanical engineering elements, typically turbo machinery: turbines for compressors, but that also includes wind turbines, for example, it’s not only gas turbines.

At the more electrical side we’re looking into solar power, so photovoltaics. We’re also looking at power systems from a controls perspective and from a device perspective. The device view would be transformers, rectifiers – so the whole power electronics. Power electronics, controls, thermodynamics, aerodynamics – these are the disciplines which we use.