Interview with Dr. Fabien Massabuau—Winner of the Materials 2025 Young Investigator Award

We had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Fabien Massabuau, winner of the Materials 2025 Young Investigator Award. Dr. Massabuau joined the department of physics as a Chancellor’s Fellow in September 2019. His research focused on wide bandgap semiconductors for ultraviolet optoelectronic devices, with a main emphasis on α-Ga2O3 and h-BN. Prior to that, he was in the department of materials science and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge for his Ph.D. (2011-2015) and post-doc (2015-2019). In Cambridge, Dr. Massabuau focused on understanding the correlation between the nanostructure of III-Nitride materials and their optical properties. He actively participated in the development of a “multi-microscopy” methodology to observe the same nanoscale feature under several different microscopes (AFM, SEM-CL, TEM). This work led to a new understanding of the properties of defects (dislocations, trench defects) in these materials.

Dr. Massabuau has authored 40 peer-reviewed articles cumulating >600 citations, 2 book chapters, and 1 mobile application and is involved with Doctoral Researcher Awards (committee member), SN Applied Sciences (editorial board).

The following is an interview with Dr. Fabien Massabuau:

1. Can you tell us a little bit about your research?

I’m working on wide band gap semiconductors, which is a category of materials which is sensitive to ultraviolet light. I’m interested in their application for ultraviolet light sensing. We do a lot of characterisations of these materials, especially of their luminescence as it helps us understand what is happening inside the material, what are the defects present, and how may they impact the performance of future devices?

2. How did you become interested in the field?

I used to work on other categories of semiconductors which were for visible light applications. When I was finishing my PhD, and I had to think about what could be next and tried to identify where the next challenges were, I thought one of the big challenges in the field was UV light. Because getting materials which are sensitive to shorter and shorter wavelengths is increasingly more difficult. So, I went in that direction of research and well, that paid off. And then I just continued further in that direction. I continued with what works; it was a nice avenue of untapped research and an interesting place where I could do a lot of new stuff.

3. What motivated you to apply for the award?

I applied to it last year!

I'm reaching the end of what can be called a young investigator and got interested in this kind of award as a result. This award was a good opportunity for me to be considered a serious leader in the UK field.

4. As part of the award, you won a free APC voucher. Do you have any ideas about the kind of paper that you would like to publish with the voucher?

The direction of my research now will inform the way that I use the voucher. In general, I am more of a microscopist, but I recently started new activities to produce cost-effective materials. I'm trying to drive my research towards making this technology widely available, and cheap, so that we can give everyone access to safe tap water.

Eventually, I’ll be looking at developing cheap processes for making these materials; so maybe the paper might go in that direction.

5. Do you think that this will be a research topic that will be of increasing interest in your community in the coming years?

I hope so.

I like the idea of being able to make an impact in the world. I hope developing these materials to enter the light sensing markets will help, paving the way to bigger markets in the future.

6. How has open access impacted your research career up to this point?

From my perspective, I think Open Access is actually pretty good because it allows you to be more visible. I feel like the papers are much better read.

I have some collaborators from institutions who don't necessarily have subscription access to some journals. And sometimes you receive an e-mail saying, “Oh, do you have access to that paper? Can you send me the PDF?”. At least with Open Access you don't have this problem and actually you make it really available to everyone.

7. Do you have any advice that you would give to young researchers in your community?

I think a big part is being curious and seeing opportunities.
You shouldn’t be afraid to be the first to try something, to give it a shot. If you’re a young researcher especially you might be inclined to do exactly what your supervisor tells you to. But I say, value the Friday afternoon experiment!

8. Why do you think it is important that researchers are recognised for their work through awards like this?

Researchers often have that imposter syndrome that make us feel we’ve reached that stage of our career by chance. This type of award provides some sort of validation of our worth, that our work is approved by our peers. Being pragmatic, these awards help for your employment, promotion, and funding applications; they are recognitions of leadership which helps increasing success chances.

9. Is there anything you think we could do to benefit young researchers, outside of APWs and the awards that we offer?

A big part of the publisher’s work is being known and attracting the community, which is probably the hardest part because when I was starting to write papers during my PhD, the advice we got was to publish where the community is, typically in the same journals that you are citing.

10. What expertise do you think MDPI can offer to the academic community?

I think it would be great if you could come and talk about AI. The problem that’s coming up at the teaching level is that we have trouble with examinations eventually involving AI. This is an issue for us, but also for the publishing world, I imagine. We should embrace AI as much as we can, but we must make sure we do so in a responsible manner.

Unfortunately, when we see people talking about it, it is the bad cases, e.g., “Dear ChatGPT please write me this paper”.

I feel like there’s a bit of a stigma on using AI. We shouldn’t be so ashamed of using it though; we just have to make sure we use it the right way. Part of my future job here will involve teaching students how to make AI work for them in the right way. For example, they could start their early literature reviews using AI to find the right overview to help you when you come to write the review out properly.

We should end the stigma around AI so that publishers, researchers, and the wider learning community can make good use of AI, ensuring good practice.