UKCCSRC ECR Awayday, London, 24-25 May 2022

In this blog post Jiacheng Sun, University of Edinburgh, shares his experience of the ECR Awayday, held May 24-25th 2022 at Imperial College London.

The UKCCSRC ECR Awayday was a very good opportunity for ECRs from different universities to gather and share their updates on recent research and ideas.

I am a second-year PhD student at the UK Biochar Research Centre (UKBRC), School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh. My research focuses on algae biomass derived biochar and bioenergy system. The ECR Awayday from UKCCSRC was a good opportunity for me to meet people from other institutes researching similar topics like mine, especially pyrolytic biochar. Spread over 2 days, this event gave me a chance to get knowledge from and network with other ECRs and professionals working on climate change technology and initiatives. Below are three posters with similar focuses.

Apart from networking, an external speaker – James Watt, from a professional background, spoke at the event on their contributions to climate change solutions and how ECRs can take part in the industry. I was given a detailed overview of the ongoing CCS efforts in the company and industrial level through the speaker from WSP. This allowed me to better understand the gap between academia and industries, and how we can gather the efforts together to achieve net zero emissions.

In addition to networking and learning from industry leaders, ECRs at the event were given the chance to present their own work. These poster presentations offered me an overview of the enormous breadth of research being conducted across a variety of fields in order to find answers to the problem of climate change. I presented my own research on a comparison of microalgae derived biochar and hydrochar – product properties and environmental impact. Furthermore, the trip to the CCS exhibition in the Science Museum offered ECRs a great opportunity to examine the current CCS strategies from a ‘non-CCS-acquaintance’ angle.

Finally, I would like to thank the organiser – UKCCSRC hosting this event, and also thank Imperial College offering the conference site allowing us this valuable in-person event.