Winter School 2019: A collaborative experience

I am Adeola Awoyomi, a doctoral researcher at Cranfield University, United Kingdom. My research studies is on shipping, investigating the potential for on-board capture on cargo ships. I am supervised by Dr Kumar Patchigolla and Prof Ben Anthony.

I attended the recently concluded Winter School 2019 at Halifax hall, Sheffield. This event started on the 12th and ended on the 14th of February. Different researchers from EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in CCS, Cleaner Fossil Energy and UKCCSRC were involved.  It was an exciting experience and a platform put together for researchers at different stages in their studies to relate. The first day started up with a welcome address by Colin Snape, introducing different activities lined up for the programme. Mai Bui, a Senior Research Associate at Imperial College London, was a speaker at the event. She delivered a presentation on ‘CCS: the way forward’, majorly focusing on two negative emissions technologies, DAC and BECCS, and its sustainability. On the first day, we also had Vince Pizzoni, an associate professor and a career coach, who gave a talk on ‘Careers with a Doctoral Degree’. He mentioned the importance of having a professional LinkedIn profile (right profile picture and the use of right key words) as most employers use LinkedIn for recruitment.

The first day proceeded with presentations by first year PhD students about their research. It was an enlightening experience, as most the first year students were company related projects, pointing to the fact that research activities are needed for any process improvement at a minimum cost. One major learning outcome outlined for the Winter School is to build professional practical skills, hence the essence for the group activity. We were split into 7 groups, all of which were given different sectors to work with. The sectors given includes; freight transport, public transport, plastics, iron and steel, shipping, cement, and personal transport. The goal of the group activity was to determine the best solution for each sector assigned on how to deliver an 80% reduction of CO₂ emissions by 2050, using UK as a case study. I was assigned to the Group A (freight transport), although shipping was excluded from our case because it had been assigned as a different sector. The first day ended for me with the group work, we met and split the tasks for each individual to work on for the next day. I was assigned to the freight road transport group.

The second day started off with second year poster presentations, and then followed by 3rd year oral presentations. After the presentations, my group met to prepare for our presentation on the following morning (Thursday). I was exactly pleased with my group as there was synergy amongst us while preparing and determining an action plan. On the final day, my group started out first with the presentation, thereafter others presented. We also had the prize giving event for the best project, poster and group presentations. I exchanged contacts with a lot of persons to build necessary contacts for the time ahead. The day ended with lunch and a feedback session on how to make the event more interesting and beneficial. I loved the mix of professionals both as students and subject matter expertise in building up my intellectual and professional skills.