Game Changers 

To nurture the next generation of researchers, an inclusive internship programme was created to demystify research and ensure that opportunities in academia are open to all. Over the last five years Game Changers has run a total of 24 internships, recruited talented students from three universities, worked directly with partners in the renewable energy sector and helped a total of five interns become PhD students in Strathclyde, while supporting others in securing graduate positions. The interns' research is not only a valuable experience, but also leads to significant outputs such as publications and industrially used software. The internship programme includes involvement in a Strathclyde research team and participation in specially designed research skills workshops. The recruitment process has been deliberately designed to allow a wide range of applicants to be recruited. It is hoped that the good practice developed here will contribute to improvements in recruitment across the University. 

WeDoWind 

WeDoWind is a method that enables and motivates people from academia and industry, as well as other stakeholders, to collaborate, share and manage data and knowledge in a secure environment, creating a mutually beneficial win-win situation (Figure 1). The method is based on industry-provided 'Challenges' coordinated through digital 'Spaces'. Several digital spaces form sector-specific ecosystems of collaborators. The method offers added value to anyone who wants to either define or solve a challenge. The former receive an innovative solution to a challenge. The latter have the opportunity to be part of an international community, to gain experience by working with complex data or to develop and test new methods on previously inaccessible data sets. For example, Cubico Sustainable Investments recently published two SCADA datasets for the Kelmarsh and Penmanshiel (UK) wind farms. Fittingly, several «Challenges» have already been defined, which are being worked on with the WeDoWind method in the «Cubico Open Data Exploration (CODE) Space».  Read more here.

An exciting collaboration 

With the project «WeDoWind meets GameChangers», we are bringing the «GameChangers» internship programme together with a WeDoWind challenge for the first time. In this collaboration, which will take place over the summer, two research-interested and motivated students will be sought to work together on real-life data-driven challenges from industry in the field of wind energy. Each student will work at a different partner university and will be supported by experts from the respective host institution to make a concrete contribution within the project. Besides the two partner universities OST and Strathclyde University in Glasgow, UK, the organisations Cubico Sustainable Investments, UK, and Texas A&M University, USA, accompany this project. Cubico Sustainable Investments is continuously looking for new and exciting ways to use their data. Therefore, this collaborative project has been developed to mutually benefit both the participants and the challenge provider. Interested students will have the opportunity to work closely with experts at their host institutions, have access to real wind turbine data and actively contribute to important ongoing research. In return, Cubico Sustainable Investments will be provided with a variety of interesting and useful inputs and solutions to their problems.  

Link to the job description

If you are interested in wind energy, Open Science or Diversity & Inclusion, contact Sarah Barber, Head of Department Wind Energy Innovation at the IET, at sarah.barber@ost.ch.