Dr Maher has over twenty five years experience of research in electronic materials, sensors and instrumentation. He has worked in major industrial corporations including Plessey, Johnson Matthey and Oxford Instruments, has published over 50 papers and is the author of 15 patents. Since 1997 he has worked in the field of HTS coated conductors and was the Co-ordinator for the EC-funded READY project (BE97-4572). This was an ambitious €4.5 million European Union funded project involving 10 partners from around Europe (companies, universities and institutes) to develop the technologies required to manufacture significant lengths of YBCO coated conductors and demonstrate their use in a 41 kVA transformer. Preliminary tests on the transformer, the world's first electrical machine incorporating coated conductor, were announced at EUCAS2003 in Italy, and final tests were reported at ASC2004 in Florida.

He has also chaired the Magnets Working Group of SCENET (The European Network for Superconductivity) and served on an ESF (European Science Foundation) panel in 1999 formulating the case for a new High Magnetic Fields Laboratory in Europe. His current work includes the development of revolutionary new concepts in electrical machines based on coated conductor cylinders with no physical winding processes.  This is now attracting attention worldwide as a new means of advancing the field of coated conductors but without the need for long lengths of the so-called 2nd Generation wire. The patent position for this revolutionary technology, involving direct deposition and patterning of multilayer superconducting films onto textured rotating cylinders, is now well advanced, with feasibility published and demonstrations underway.  The approach will allow enormous engineering current density in lightweight, compact electrical machines in the future.