As part of our 2023 Annual Assembly, the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub Early Career Researchers Forum took place on 11 July, and welcomed 50 delegates to the Boldrewood Campus at the University of Southampton.
The Supergen ORE Hub ECR Community aims to connect ECRs with more senior researchers, in the UK and internationally, to create a diverse and supportive community that nurtures the next generation of ORE research leaders. The ECR Forum is a way for ECRs to come together and share their research and network with colleagues.
We were delighted to be joined by keynote speaker Christopher Briggs, Regional Innovation Manager from Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, who gave the industry perspective on the crucial links between industry and academia. He shared his experience of being the recipient of research proposals and gave comprehensive guidance on how to refine an R&D proposal pitch for the best chance of success.
We enjoyed some fascinating presentations from three early career researchers describing their career path and giving their thoughts on key moments that helped to transition their careers. For example, Katherine Kwa, a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, described the boost her career received when she received an award from the Supergen ORE Hub to develop a research project with an industry partner. That first experience working in an industry-academia collaborative project has given her skills, experience and connections that have led to further work delivering research that cuts across academia and industry.
The ECRs had the chance to practice pitching their research and sharing their poster presentations with their peers in an Industry Role Play session. The posters were showcased at the Annual Assembly the following day, with the top three posters being announced during the closing session. The winning posters were:
- First place: Saeid Lotfian (University of Strathclyde) - "A Novel Procedure for the Ultrasonic Inspection of Wind Turbine Bolted Connection"
- Second place: Anna Holcombe (University of Plymouth) - "Comparison of a scaled physical model and numerical model of a dynamic power cable for a floating offshore wind turbine"
- Third place: Aananthy Sarma (University of Hull) - "Multi-Point Sensing & Defect Detection of Wind Turbine Blades: An Approach Using Fibre Bragg Gratings"
You can view a booklet of all the ECR abstracts and posters here.
