another OLED discussion...

So I finally met up with this Prof Max Shtein from the Material Science department today. He's a really yound dude for a professor; in fact i think he has just graduated from Princeton working under Prof Forrest' group. I was abit apprehensive about the meeting cos I lack the intellectual depth to have a truly academic discussion with him on organic electronics, and my guess is he probably knows more about the economics of organic-related industries. In other words I'm afraid that I can't hold myself in a meaningful discussion with him on the subject. To my relief he turned out to be a really easy-going guy who possesses none of those arrogant air around a typical "why don't you understand this simple shit" professor. He has a lot of passion about the research he's doing although he's also very realistic when it comes to the commerical adoption of organic electronics. Apparently he thinks that solar cell application will be a bigger commerical thrust than OLED, given that LCD is hard to beat. I think that it's admirable that he's still a dreamer, i mean from the way he talks about these stuff it's obvious that he's really enthusiastic about organic electronics. I think that's hard to do when one becomes sort of an expert in any field when you understands more of the obstacles and challenges. To the extent that my main purpose of meeting him is to network with him to lay the foundation for possible future collaboration on my start-up, it's a great 2-hour dialogue. I certainly hope to keep in contact with him and have a feeling that he'd be one of those first people I'd ring up if I were to succeed in convincing Temsaek about venturing into this field. The next step is to talk to one of those decision-maker on top within Temasek during this summer when I get back. Hopefully I can instill some excitement in the management.