For example, if a recycling plant wants to tell different types of plastic apart, or a farmer wants to monitor the germinations of seeds, our cameras will tell them this directly using their spectral signatures.

Gwen Wyatt-Moon (CEO) of Prospectral

We spoke to Peter Christopher to find out more:
 
What is the background of Prospectral? 
 
Prospectral was born out of Covid. The four founders, Gwen Wyatt-Moon, Tom Albrow-Owen, Oliver Burton and myself started a coffee group during the first lockdown and over the course of many (2 metre spaced) conversations we developed the ideas that we would eventually turn into Prospectral.  

We incorporated a couple of years ago on the basis of grant funding and recently closed our pre-seed round for $1.2M.
 
Please explain the services and products that you offer and the sorts of projects you work on.
 
We are building next generation imaging sensors for materials identification. Unlike normal camera sensors, these won’t be tuned to colour, instead being tuned to the materials in the world around you. For example, if a recycling plant wants to tell different types of plastic apart, or a farmer wants to monitor the germinations of seeds, our cameras will tell them this directly using their spectral signatures.
 
The main difference for us, from other imaging companies is how we design our sensors directly for the materials instead of individual colours. Our cameras don’t tell you the amount of each type of red, green and blue in an image. Instead, they tell you concentrations of the spectral signatures of each material.

This allows our imagers to be far more sensitive than anything else on the market while making the data we capture far more valuable and useful to our customers.
 
We’ve got ongoing projects in recycling, agriculture, medtech and mining.
 
What will be the potential real-world impact of your technology?
 
Did you know that less than 10% of plastics get recycled? Even for plastics you put in your recycling bin, only a small percentage are ever actually reused. The reason? It’s nearly impossible for people or machines to tell different plastics apart. While two transparent plastic bottles may look the same, they are made from an array of incompatible plastic types.
 
Our solution is to see more of the light in more detail. While humans can see three colours, these cover only a very small part of the available spectrum and only in very limited detail. Digital cameras are similar and even next generation spectral imaging techniques lack the range of capability that our sensors have.

By designing sensors for materials, instead of colours, we can tell individual plastics apart in a way that nothing else can.
 
Our technology isn’t just useful for recycling. What if you could tell fruit was ripe on a tree just by looking at it? Or if you could tell what was in a drink using your camera? Or if you could tell what a pill was using your phone? From scientific techniques such as fluorescence imaging all the way through to mining and recycling, our cameras promise to open up a new world of hands-free materials identification capability.
 
What are your future goals?
 
Build and scale.
 
We’re taking our prototypes from the lab to the fab so that we can make these cameras available to everyone cheaper, faster, better. We talk a lot in engineering about how next-generation technology needs next-generation materials. Prospectral’s mission is based on knowing that next-generation materials need next-generation imaging.

Professor Tim Wilkinson speaking about Prospectral says: 

"Prospectral is a shining example of the importance of active technical discussions during coffee and lunch breaks. The meeting of expertise from materials, nanotechnology and photonics backgrounds has led to the formation of the Prospectral team and is the heart of its technical strength and innovation."

The engineering alumni behind Prospectral:

Gwen Wyatt-Moon (CEO) did a PhD at Imperial College London in upscaling the manufacture of nanoelectronics before becoming a senior research fellow with Professor Andrew Flewitt.

Tom Albrow-Owen (CTO) did his PhD with Professor Tawfique Hasan on miniaturised spectrometer devices, before going on to hold a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the group of Professor Hannah Joyce. 

Oliver Burton (CSO) did a PhD with Professor Stephan Hofmann in Scalable Nanomaterial growth and characterisation and currently holds an Oppenheimer early career research Fellowship at the Department of Engineering.

Peter J. Christopher (CIO) did a PhD with Professor Tim Wilkinson in Holographic 3D Printing before becoming a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College. He is now an Assistant Professor and Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham.