Born in Iran, Mahmoud Farhadiroushan has been at the forefront of fibre-optic monitoring technology developments, first as an award-winning engineering student in the UK and then as a successful entrepreneur, currently executive director of Silixa, the company he co-founded in 2008. He was a Joint winner of Metrology Award in 2000, British Telecom Award in 2001, Institute of Physics Innovation Award in 2015, and Silixa won the Queen’s Award 2021 for Innovation. Applications include borehole seismic and one day may include Moon operations.
Tell us about your transition from Iran to the UK
In 1979, I decided to continue my studies in England. I did a crash course in English and took GCE exams in less than four months followed by my A-levels a year later. I was then accepted at Queen Mary College, London University to study for a BSc in electrical and electronic engineering.
You gravitated to fibre optics?
One of the areas of my research was on fibre-optic gyroscopes for measuring the Earth’s rotation and I had to learn a lot about the interaction of light and the fundamental properties of optical fibres.
Why did you leave Sensornet
for a garage workshop?
I enjoyed working with Tom Parker at Kings College London on distributed optical fibre sensors and we had several joint patent applications. We co-founded Sensornet in 1998 and then received investment from Shell Technology Ventures (STV) in 2002 to commercialize the technology and expand the business. The company grew from two people to 40 employees before we agreed on a timely exit and formed Silixa in 2007. Dr Sergey Shatalin from Moscow joined us as a co-founder. We converted the garage to a lab and used the studio above as an office.
Origins of the name Silixa?
Naming your business is very important and it was really difficult to find a name that you could trademark and register as a domain name, even ‘Dark Photons’. Silixa means Silica (glass) with the X factor!
Did you really buy equipment from e-Bay?
During the 2008 recession many telecom labs were closing down and our equipment could be purchased and auctioned on e-Bay. We built the first prototype unit just before the visit by our first investor Don Riley from Chevron Technology Ventures. Don said that he was going to invest on one condition, whatever we did we should not sell the garage. Later we had to explain to the UK VAT authorities that we were going to keep the garage door and convert the garage to a museum. We still have the garage, the door and the optical fibre cables installed in the garden.
Temperature monitoring to seismic: how did that evolve?
We thought that by using a distributed fibre-optic sensor we would have a digital array of acoustic sensors along the entire wellbore that can be used to record and localize the acoustic energy resulting from fluid flow and listen to the sound of production. After an initial successful trial, Mark Thompson from Equinor contacted us to do a seismic field trial offshore Norway. This was the entry point for Silixa into seismic applications. Equinor invested in Silixa in 2012, after an investment by Lime Rock Partners in 2010, to expand our business into seismic and geophysical applications.
What markets does the company address?
Besides oil and gas, 50% of our activity, Silixa has also been heavily involved in many early carbon capture utilization and storage projects. Other areas include mining, environmental and earth science monitoring.
Next stop the Moon?
The advances in Silixa’s Carina sensing system enabled with engineered Constellation fibre has attracted new scientific applications such as the detection of gravitational waves. The Moon, being far quieter than the Earth, provides ideal conditions for the search of gravitational waves. There are a number of ideas about the siting of an optical fibre sensing facility on the Moon that are being discussed with Prof Stavros Katsanevas, director at European Gravitational Observatory (EGO/VIRGO) Institute, and with other international partners.
Advice for entrepreneurs?
Enjoy what you do, know your markets, customers, and competition, learn how to negotiate, define your strategy and your business model, plan for success and make a commitment, build a team, manage the cash flow, build a track record and create competitive advantage, and take time off!
