April 2016

 

Work Package 5: Network training events

All 12 Early Stage Researchers attended the International Conference Day that MEDOW hosted as part of IEEE International Energy Conference EnergyCon 2016 in Leuven, Belgium.  The day was one of our network-wide outreach and communication activities, which form an integral part of the researchers’ training.  See the event webpage for details.

We are on track to achieve all of our network training deliverables. MEDOW researchers have been benefiting from a wide range of training activities, including industry days, personal skills development, lectures from our Visiting Scientists, and group discussions of their individual projects.

  • Research Training workshops held December 2013 and July 2014 (Task 5.1) and Assembly Meetings held January 2015, June 2015 and December 2015 (Task 5.6)
  • Research seminars held December 2013, July 2014 and June 2015 (Task 5.2)
  • Industrial Days held December 2013, July 2014, January 2015, June 2015 and December 2015 (Task 5.5)
  • Complementary skills training held July 2014, Jan 2015, June 2015 and December 2015 (Task 5.7)
  • The Network-wide Training Programme was reviewed bythe MEDOW Supervisory Board in July 2014 (Milestone 5.1). The Programme brings together training programme as laid out in Annex I and maps network training activities to Tasks, Milestones and Deliverables for WP5.
  • Network events held in Cardiff (December 2013), in Porto (July 2014), in Leuven and Brussels (January 2015), in Roskilde (June 2015), in Barcelona (December 2015) and in Leuven (April 2016).

A whole-consortium meeting and a neeting of the Supervisory Board took place at the Leuven meeting.  Discussions on the next and final network training week, in Cardiff in July 2016, took place and ESRs had the opportunity to highlight any training they would like to receive.

Work Package 6: Training of individual ESR/ER

An amalgamated meetings of the Supervisory Board and Training Steering Committee, which oversee MEDOW’s researcher training activities, took place.

  • All ESR and ER Personal Career Development Plans (PCDP) were peer reviewed by a member of the network and approved by the Training Steering Committee using the MEDOW PCDP Approval Process (Task 6.1 and Milestone 6.1).
  • ESRs and ERs are continuing to monitor and review their PCDPs with their supervisor(s) and Work Package leaders (Milestone 6.2)
  • All ESRs are enrolled on PhD degree programmes (Task 6.3)
  • Most secondments have now taken place. ESRs and ERs will write a short report on each secondment – these will feed into Task 6.2/Deliverable 6.2 “Report of secondments”, which will be part of the MEDOW Final Report.

Work Package 7: Dissemination and outreach activities

MEDOW researchers have made a great start to their dissemination activities!  So far, they have presented 38 international conference and colloquium papers and have presented their work at a wide range of local conferences and research workshops.

  • A Network-wide outreach event was held at Cardiff University in December 2013 and a video ‘MEDOW In One Minute’, which is available on YouTube and the project website, was made at Universidade do Porto in July 2015 (Task 7.1/Milestone 7.1/Deliverable 7.1)
  • Two Network-wide outreach events were held in Barcelona in December 2015: MEDOW researchers taught a class on ‘Grid Integration of Renewable Energy’ to Masters students and also met with students of a local school, Escola Sunion, to explain their work (Task 7.1/Milestone 7.1/Deliverable 7.1)
  • A Network-wide outreach event took place in Leuven in April 2016, in the form of the international conference day – a Special Session on Offshore Wind and HVDC Grids co-hosted with Friends of the Supergrid as part of a major international conference.  This gave us an audience of over 100 individuals.
  • Internal guidelines for dissemination were drafted in December 2013, approved by D&IP Committee in January 2014 and circulated to all network members.
  • Various forms of dissemination have taken place e.g. story about MEDOW contributed by ESR7 to Indian newspapers; publication of quarterly external newsletters; articles on MEDOW in many online energy/renewables websites (Deliverable 7.2).
  • Facebook profile and LinkedIn group launched November 2014 (Deliverable 7.2).

Details of MEDOW’s publications, presentations and public outreach activities can be seen on the Dissemination webpages.

Work Package 8: Network management

The Years 1-3 Progress Report was submitted to the European Commission in April 2016 and we await feedback from the Commission.

  • The MEDOW website was set up in summer 2013 (Task 8.1 and Deliverable 8.1)
  • Network meetings 1-6 have taken place (Task 8.2 and Deliverable 8.2)
  • Year 1 Progress Report submitted April 2014, Mid-Term Report submitted December 2014, 1st Periodic report submitted May 2015, Years 1-3 Progress report submitted April 2016 (Task 8.3 and Deliverable 8.3)
  • Successful Mid-Term Review meeting with European Commission in January 2015
  • Grant Agreement and Consortium Agreement completed in 2013 (Milestone 8.1)
  • Recruitment of all ESRs by Spring 2014 and all ERs by Spring 2015 (Milestone 8.2)