Meet Kim L. Sorensen, CEO and co-founder of UBIQ Aerospace. He is also the main inventor of the D•ICE technology, a work that he began during his Ph.D. at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
What’s your main focus right now?
– It’s a lot of strategy work: we are revising our plans both long and short term to be dynamic and accommodate the opportunities we see happen sooner than we anticipated. We’re also growing the team, which means that we are working on identifying the competencies we need and then hire great people. Aside from that, we are constantly working to align all activities and all team members, ensuring that everyone is optimally working towards the same goals. And then we try to get out of their way.
What did you do before founding UBIQ Aerospace?
– I’m from Denmark, where I grew up in the outskirts of Copenhagen. After high school, I fooled around for a long time before starting my university studies at 26. When I finished my master’s in robotics from the Technical University of Denmark, a new research centre of excellence was starting at NTNU here in Trondheim, and I was offered to do my Ph.D. here. I had met Kasper (the CTO of UBIQ) at the university in Copenhagen. We enjoyed working together and were keen to start a company together if the chance ever offered itself. I was also very fortunate that my advisor at NTNU was very entrepreneurial. So, once my research had matured, we all agreed that there was a commercial potential that we wanted to investigate further. That’s how UBIQ came to life.
Are you more of an entrepreneur or an engineer?
– Probably more of an entrepreneur, even though I do like working on technology development myself and miss it now that I don’t get to do that with focus. When you build a technology company like UBIQ, it’s easy to get lost in tech development, to keep refining it, and do spins on various aspects of it. To escape that potential pitfall, what we tried to focus on very early is creating something that actually offers value to people. Not just developing great technology, but building something that actually has an impact. That’s what I enjoy even more than developing technology myself, which is why I would categorize myself as more of an entrepreneur than engineer.
Who’s your favourite Nobel prize winner?
– I think the way Richard Feynman looks at knowledge gathering is fascinating. Instead of just memorizing theory you need to understand what it actually means.
Thank you Kim! Last question: If you were a superhero, what powers would you have?
– The Doctor Manhattan capability of having one mind, but several physical entities that you can operate at the same time.
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