“The TESLA initiative provides a great opportunity to combine the expertise of academia with that of industry leading companies. I feel very privileged to be gaining knowledge, training and experience from both and this will be an invaluable networking opportunity. I am very proud to be able to work on a cutting-edge space related project.”

Luke Robins, Early Stage Researcher

Luke Robins was born in Surrey, England and grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) in 2013. In 2014 he started working for Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility as an Engineer in training. First based at Matla power station and then Eskom Research, Testing and Development in the Smart Grids Centre of Excellence. During this period, a part-time Master of Engineering degree was obtained with distinction from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa).

In 2016 Luke moved on to work for Huawei Technologies South Africa in the project management field. Over three years he was given increasing levels of responsibility and leading projects to roll out IP/ Optical transmission infrastructure for South Africa’s national transmission carrier. Luke is currently working towards a Doctor of Technical Sciences at Graz University of Technology as an Early Stage researcher with the TESLA initiative.

The focus of the Doctoral Studies is “Additive manufacturing of non-planar microwave passive components”. The project aims to leverage the strengths of additive manufacturing for use in satellite communications applications. The target is to reduce the cost, complexity and current challenges of the manufacturing process while improving repeatability, stability and performance of the components.