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Message from Tadj Oreszczyn, Director of UCL-Energy

17 December 2013

Clouds

As we prepare for the fourth UCL Energy Institute Christmas party it is useful to reflect on the achievements in 2013. Yet again, along with the UCL Institute of Sustainable Resources, our sister institute, we have doubled in size this year which has meant that we have welcomed many new faces to the world of the energy, research and teaching.

The Institutes are heading towards raising some £35M of project funding, having submitted 164 proposals with a 60% success rate.  The new Masters course was launched this September in the Economics and Policy and of Energy and Environment, this attracted around 200 applicants resulting in 50 new MSc students.  Our doctoral training programme is also developing with a record number of new MRes and PhD students. Last month we were ecstatic to hear that we won new funding to continue our Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in End Use Energy Demand.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) ran a major competition attracting 330 applications across all subject areas for world leading Centres for Doctoral Training. Each centre receiving approximately 50 studentships. Rt. Hon David Willetts MP announced in November the successful 72 winners for a total funding pot of £350m. Undertaking these bids is major exercise involving raising significant financial support from key stakeholders and producing a innovative PhD structure, this was only achievable through the hard work of the CDT team which included Bob Lowe, Cliff Elwell, Mike Davies, Alison Parker, Tashweka Anderson, Simon Buller and Kim Novelli.  Our proposal built on the successful London Loughborough (LoLo) CDT we won some 5 years ago.  The new centre will engage more with key stakeholders and will focus studentships around well-established research programmes in the following areas:

1. Technologies and Systems including smart systems and interactions with transport

2. Energy Epidemiology the study of energy use of the population to develop and evaluate polices, and technologies

3. Urban Scale energy systems

4. Performance and Process, the performance of buildings and components in the field (new build and retrofit) and its relationship to context, systems and communities of practice engaged in design, production, commissioning, and operation

5. Unintended Consequences, including the study of overheating, moisture problems and rebound

Since our establishment we have seen our PhD students at the core of the Institute. The new CDT studentships will help attract the brightest researchers into this exciting area.

I hope that everybody has a peaceful break over the festive season.