A YOUNG scientist at the University of Huddersfield has been awarded almost £100,000 to help hi-tech industries.

Dr Feng Gao, a senior research fellow in the university’s Surface Metrology Group, hopes to help businesses make big savings.

Dr Gao is working on a new measure for the ultra-thin surfaces of solar energy panels.

Often in the manufacture of photovoltaic film, a cell which stores solar energy, up to 70% of products have to be scrapped because of imperfections.

Dr Gao aims to develop a new technique which gives engineers a more accurate measure.

Funding worth £93,668 has been received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, under its First Grant Scheme, aimed at academics in the early stage of their careers.

The project should be completed by August 2014.

Dr Gao gained his first degrees in precision test and instrumentation at Tianjin University and began his research career at National Institute of Metrology of China, winning a major award for one of his projects.

In 1995 he became a visiting scholar at Germany’s Physikalisch-Techniche-Bundesanstalt and two years later he relocated to the UK for PhD study in precision measurement.

He has had 38 papers published.