Three leading UK engineers are to be presented with The Princess Royal Silver Medal, one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s most prestigious individual awards. They will receive their medals at the Academy Awards Dinner in London on the 8th July from HRH The Princess Royal, who is a Royal Fellow of the Academy.
The award celebrates an outstanding personal contribution made to UK engineering by an early to mid-career engineer resulting in market exploitation. This year’s winners have used lasers and optical fibres to develop a new way of capturing information from space, created software that makes batteries more sustainable, and applied AI to make touch-responsive materials.
The recipients of The Princess Royal Silver Medals for 2026 are:
- Dr Ian Campbell, Co-founder of Breathe Battery Technologies
- Dr Liucheng Guo, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of TG0
- Professor Robert Thomson FREng, Professor of Photonics at Heriot-Watt University
Luke Logan FREng, Chair of the Academy’s Awards Committee, said: “This year’s winners of The Princess Royal Silver Medal have each pushed the boundaries of engineering. Through their research and innovative ideas, they have supported the UK in being a leader in engineering and sustainability, making significant contributions to our national economy through inspiring entrepreneurship and collaboration.”
With his company, Breathe Battery Technologies, Dr Ian Campbell, Co-Founder at Breathe Battery Technologies, has discovered how to extract the most potential from batteries by improving the charging process.
By simulating the internal workings of batteries, the team at Breathe created software that gives insight on the electrochemistry and other issues that can reduce their efficiency. The software helps manufacturers to optimise battery charging and design and can be integrated without hardware changes. By extracting better performance from existing battery chemistries, this technology has the potential to reduce electronic waste and accelerate the transition to cleaner, electrified transport and devices.
Ian achieved his PhD at Imperial College London with his research focus being lithium-ion batteries. Founded in 2019 as a spin-out from Imperial College London, Breathe Battery Technologies has now grown to operate the largest battery testing facility in London and has raised more than $33 million in funding. They have also collaborated with large corporations such as Volvo Cars, OPPO and Polestar.
Dr Liucheng Guo, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of TG0, who received his PhD from Imperial College London, has spent the last decade developing a first-of-its-kind “AI for Sensing” technology for electronic products, giving machines a more human-like sense of touch and enabling more intuitive interaction.
Most electronic products, from robotic skins to car seats, rely on having individual buttons for powering on and off alongside multiple sensors and parts for general use. TG0’s patented technology replaces these complex separate parts with intelligent touch-sensitive surfaces powered by lightweight embedded AI, resulting in simpler, lower-cost and more sustainable designs. The system can detect signal changes from different components, for example, detection of pressure, location, direction, and movement of touch. This mimics a more human way of perceiving and processing tactile information, creating more user-centric experiences.
The company has received support from Innovate UK, the European Innovation Council, and leading investors including Amadeus Capital Partners and Fuel Ventures. TG0 has been recognised as one of Deloitte UK’s Fast 50 fastest-growing technology companies, selected for Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme, and received the GBx Best in British Tech Award for Deep Tech Innovation.
Liucheng is currently an Industrial Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of both the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the British Computer Society (BCS). He was chosen to join the Academy’s Shott Scale Up Accelerator where he graduated as an SME Leader in 2019. He was also a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in 2021 and is a STEM Ambassador, helping to inspire the next generation of engineers and innovators.
By applying photonics to astronomy, Professor Robert Thomson FREng, Professor of Photonics at Heriot-Watt University, invented the integrated photonic lantern, redefining what is possible in fibre optics.
Conventional optical fibres carry data as pulses of light. Across longer distances, these are typically single mode fibres that rely on light having a single pattern as it travels. Using single mode optical fibres to collect light in astronomy is challenging because most telescopes create signals inherently composed of multiple patterns. This leads to a loss of signal and increased noise.
To overcome this, Robert developed a new type of photonic lantern small enough to be mass-produced and easily integrated into instruments for astronomy and other applications. Using ultrafast laser pulses, tiny 3D light-guiding paths are carved inside glass, creating pathways that smoothly connect the multimode light collection to single mode devices, preserving the information as it travels. Applications of Robert’s integrated photonic lanterns include capturing starlight to look for evidence of exoplanets, advanced medical and biological sensing, and next-generation telecommunications.
Robert developed the first integrated photonic lanterns during his Advanced Fellowship funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, part of UKRI. He also co-founded a company called Optoscribe, which was later acquired by Intel.
