Early Career Researchers

Our goal is to help shape the next generation of CCS leaders. We do this with a programme of funding and training opportunities.

Early Career Researcher Programme

The UKCCSRC ECR programme provides training, funding and networking opportunities for our ECR members, supporting researchers training for academic careers, and for futures outside academia. We run development Awaydays, ECR funding calls and we facilitate interdisciplinary networking and other ECR activities.

Coming up and current opportunities:

Our ECR members
ECR membership is open to postgraduate research students, post-doctoral staff and new lecturers working in a field related to CCS. For most opportunities we mean postgraduate students through to academic and research staff based at UK universities that meet the (non-technical) conditions for eligibility for the EPSRC first grant scheme.  By becoming an ECR member you’ll have access to the programme, and you can sign up to the mailing list to receive the newsletter and specific ECR bulletins letting you know what’s going on. You can opt to have your biography in the Members Directory.

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ECR Working Group

Working Group
The ECR Working Group has three UKCCSRC ECR members who work alongside the Secretariat to develop the ECR programme.  They help to steer the programme and organise ECR events, including Awaydays and are involved in supporting the strategic direction of the UKCCSRC. The ECR Working Group members also represent the UKCCSRC ECR community as part of the Advisory Council. 

Catrin Harris

ECR Working Group

Catrin is a second year PhD student in the subsurface CO2 research group, part of the Earth Science and Engineering department at Imperial College London. Catrin’s project uses the latest in petrophysical and digital rock core technology to improve our understanding of the impact of heterogeneity on capillary trapping of CO2 in the subsurface.

Michael High

ECR Working Group

Michael is a third year PhD student at Imperial College London focusing on oxygen carrier development for chemical looping applications under the supervision of Professor Paul Fennell and Dr Kyra Campbell. His focus is the rational design of oxygen carriers by developing synthesis-structure-performance relationships through rigorous chemical and physical characterisation techniques.

Gang Wang

ECR Working Group

Since 2020 Dr Gang Wang has been a postdoctoral research fellow at Heriot-Watt University, where he also completed his PhD in Petroleum Engineering and MSc in Reservoir Evaluation and Management. Gang holds the Leverhulme ECR fellowship in decarbonisation, with a particular interest in hydrogen and CO2 storage. His research focuses on using numerical simulations to fill the knowledge gap related to the interactions in the subsurface between various disciplines.

ECR events

We hold a variety of early career researcher events, including ECR-led activities, and our ECR Awayday Programme. We also connect with organisations to provide information on our events listings about other events relevant to our ECRs.

ECR Awaydays
We run regular awaydays for our ECR members, covering a variety of topics within career development areas.  The events look at specific skills, relevant to both academic and non-academic careers, and provide an opportunity to connect with other early career researchers within CCS.  Ideas for events come directly from our UKCCSRC community and are shaped by ECRs, academics and industry. 

Next Awayday:

  • 9th-10th February 2022, London (in-person)

Find out more about our ECR events, including resources from Awaydays, at the links below.

Upcoming events

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ECR Awayday (in-person), London 9th-10th February 2022

Networking, training, presentations and more.

Recent previous events

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ECR Careers Fair (Virtual Awayday) 29th September 2021

Meet representatives from organisations involved in CCS, find out more about what they do and the different roles you might one day get into!

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ECR Awayday 7th & 14th October 2020

Communication for impact and career development

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ECR Awayday 30th June 2021

Making your research accessible to a lay audience

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ECR Awayday 2nd July 2019, Manchester

Career development training

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ECR Awayday 28th April 2021

Building your network and making the most of opportunities

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ECR Awayday 12 September 2018, Sheffield

Communication skills training

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ECR Awayday 10th February 2021

Positive influencing skills: networking together

ECR funding

Find out more about our ECR funding calls below.

OPEN:

ECR Meeting Fund

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ECR Activity Fund

The activity fund enables ECRs to collaborate across institutions to plan and host CCS related events

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ECR Collaboration Fund

This award enables ECRs to collaborate either within the UK or overseas with experts outside of their home institution on areas within CCS, through the provision of support for travel

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ECR Meeting Fund

We provide travel and accommodation support for ECRs to attend UKCCSRC conferences and other meetings

ECR opportunities

Find out more about our other ECR opportunities below.  We also share information from other organisations relevant to our ECRs in our jobs and opportunities section.

OPEN:

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ECR CCS Communication Competition 2021

OPEN - We are holding a CCS video communication competition throughout the summer, 2021

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TERC/PACT Training Days

ECRs can apply for the opportunity to attend a 5-day training programme at the Pilot-scale Advanced CO2 Capture Technology (PACT) facilities

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Apply to present in our Web Series

As part of our Web Series, the poster presentation sessions provide the opportunity for ECRs to present their research to the wider UKCCSRC community

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IEAGHG Summer School

ECR members who are successful in their application to the IEAGHG Summer School can request travel support from the UKCCSRC

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ECR Working Group 2021

ECRs can apply for the opportunity to join the UKCCSRC ECR Working Group

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Winter School: EPSRC CDT in Resilient Decarbonised Fuel Energy Systems

The UKCCSRC supports our ECR members to attend via travel reimbursements.

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Conference poster competition

We hold ECR poster competitions at our conferences. Entrants receive valuable feedback from both industrial CCS practitioners and winners receive a £250 bursary for Continuing Professional Development Training