Bård Stovner is Head of Autonomy at UBIQ Aerospace, with a PhD in Marine Technology and a background as a researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He’s also one of our few team members who grew up in Trondheim.
What do you like about Trondheim?
– It’s my home, with my family and everything. Sometimes it strikes me that all of these people from around the world come to my hometown! I like that Trondheim is a big city in the Norwegian scale, but still feels like a village. It’s the biggest countryside village in Norway.
Can you tell us a bit about your role at UBIQ Aerospace?
– I’m on the scientific side, thinking a bit further into the future from a technical point of view. So far that has meant working with the detection of icing conditions with all the experimentation and testing involved. How you detect ice is very connected to how you protect the aircraft from icing. If you have very detailed knowledge on where and how icing occurs, the ice protection system doesn’t have to be overly conservative.
What motivates you?
– Solving real world problems together as a team. The best thing I know is when the group’s effort is much greater than the sum of the individual members. I also love coming together for something, like when the kindergarden or our housing area has “dugnad”, volunteer work. I’m always in a very good mood at that sort of things.
Who’s your favourite Nobel prize winner?
– I like Daniel Kahneman’s writings about the “short-cut” and “detour” circuits in your brain.
How would you spend your ideal day off?
– With my family at our mountain cabin, playing outside with the kids and going for a walk in the woods.
Do you want to recommend a book or a TV series that you like?
– I actually don’t like being recommended books or things to watch, because I need the sensation of having found them myself. When I was around 14 I discovered Metallica and thought: this is my thing! Of course they were already hugely popular, but since I didn’t know that I got the feeling of having discovered them myself.
If you were a superhero, what powers would you have?
– It’s not really a superpower, but more like an attribute that some people have: being a really intriguing storyteller who just captures people, and being able to express a complex idea in simple words. Those people can plant a seed of an idea in someone and that can become life-changing.