Meet our pioneer: Khashayar Mansourizadeh

Who are you?

I’m  Khashayar Mansourizadeh. I’m 27 years old and I’m originally from Iran.

What did you study?

I did my bachelor in Architectural Engineering in Iran. After that, I did a master in Building Engineering in Milan. I applied to multiple PhD-positions. But because of Covid I lost a few positions, because the funding stopped. I was actually accepted at the University of Houston, US, but I chose to come here, because I thought Brainport Eindhoven was the best option.

Why was Brainport Eindhoven the best option for you?

Because I lost some of the positions I had to rethink about my purpose. Then I decided I wanted to work for myself, because that would make me happy. A PDEng would mean more to me than a PhD and Brainport Eindhoven provides a good startup environment. Where the business go, i’m there. That’s why I ended up here.

What does your PDEng involve?

I’m a PDEng trainee, a doctorate student. That means that I officially am an employee of TU/e. There I’m doing a project in structural design, focused on biobased composite materials. It’s about structures that are formed with small tiny robots that collaborate with each other and make changeable structures. That’s a good topic for research, but not for business, because there’s still only a limited market for it yet. That’s why I decided to launch a startup, called Apeiron Smart Systems.

What’s your startup about?

Apeiron was initially aimed to design a cluster (swarm) of intelligent robots that could join together and create reconfigurable structures. But soon, we realized that we needed a more market-oriented idea to become a successful startup with a solid market entry point. That is why, we made an important change of course. We decided to target the huge and new market of logistics automation with the aid of autonomous robots. As a result, we made our robots larger (50 x 50 cm) and tailored them for the specific use of warehouse automation, where our robots will take care of the heavy-duty task of transporting cargo and packages inside a warehouse, in a more adaptable way. And by adaptable, we mean that our robots can be physically joined together to increase their payload capacity and adjust the system to the specific needs of the cargo size and weight for transportation.

With this we entered the TU/e Contest and hopefully we’re going to win the finals.

A similar company abroad started with Amazon Robotics, it was built upon Kiva Robotics, somewhere around 2012. After that, the world started thinking it’s possible, so we hope to be among the inital startups in Europe.

What are your experiences when it comes to working and living in Brainport Eindhoven?

In Mila I tried some incubator and startup programs. Therefore, I had some experiences with these kinds of programs. They were good, but in Brainport Eindhoven the environment is very international. People truly accept internationals. TU/e innovation Space is unique in the world, as far as I know. It’s very interesting. They train you and they support you. It brings about huge opportunities.

I’ve only lived in Eindhoven for 6 months, so because of the lockdown I haven’t been able to discover Eindhoven as much as I would have liked to. But me and my wife like it here.

What more would you like to tell students in Brainport Eindhoven?

Brainport Eindhoven, especially for non EU-students, is a great place to pursue your own passion. I always say to everybody that you can pursue your passion. Of couse it's hard and risky, but it’s a great opportunity and the risk of failure is smaller than outside the region.