Prof Gan Chee Lip: Pursuing Solutions Over Applications

Pof Gan Chee Lip, faculty in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, is the winner of the 2025 College of Engineering Innovator Award for Entrepreneurship. This award recognises a faculty member who has achieved exemplary success in their entrepreneurial pursuits.

It was 2013 when Professor Gan Chee Lip embarked on an unexpected collaboration with Lockheed Martin that would steer his career into entrepreneurship.  

The aerospace manufacturer was looking for a material that would improve the performance of satellites, machines that are designed to operate in extreme environments.

Gan’s research at that time was related to their need. He focused on microelectronics materials, reliability, and failure analysis, especially in electronic packaging.

“The opportunity to collaborate with Lockheed intrigued me,” explained Gan. “While we can explore certain things in the lab, high fabrication costs mean you can do more by working with industry.”

The solution to Lockheed Martin’s problem involved nanocopper, copper nanoparticles engineered for advanced applications in microelectronics typically formulated as a paste. This paste can be precisely applied to electronic components, for example when bonding a semiconductor chip to its substrate.

Unlike traditional solder materials, nanocopper can withstand and manage high temperatures. The material’s efficient thermal conductivity, alongside its reliability and cost-effectivity makes it a game-changer, explained Gan.

While Lockheed Martin’s specific use case for the technology was satellites, Gan saw its wider potential.

By 2016, his team’s research had matured to the point where commercialization became viable. This led to the founding of Kuprion Inc, a spin-off company dedicated to bringing nanocopper technology to market.

In 2023, Kuprion Inc. was acquired by Element Solutions. Despite its sell, Gan remains involved in the company as a collaborator, advancing the technology and its potential uses.

Reflecting on the experience, Gan admits it wasn’t always easy. In the initial years of research, his proposals for similar technology had been rejected.

“The reviewers didn’t understand what we were trying to do and its potential impact, so they rejected us. But we still managed to do it,” he commented. “It takes just one person to see the value.”

In this case, that breakthrough was Lockheed Martin recognising nanocopper as a rare solution to a pressing problem.

The experience reinforced Gan’s philosophy: rather than chasing applications after a discovery, he starts with real-world problems and works top-down to engineer solutions.

“The best advice is there's no basic or applied research. It's just about research that is not yet applied,” he offered, summarizing a famous quote from Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir George Porter.

Gan continues to look for practical needs to apply his technology. He’s currently exploring nanocopper to print conductive structures like antennas or circuits directly onto various surfaces, including flexible materials. He’s also mentoring and advising his PhD students in pushing the developments forward.

 

To learn more about Prof Gan’s work visit his research page.

You can also read more about the other  2025 CoE Award winners.

Story by Laura Dobberstein, NTU College of Engineering