July 2015

Work Package 5: Network training events

All 12 ESRs and 5 ERs, as well as some researchers from outside the network, attended the network training week in Roskilde, Denmark in June 2015.  The week was hosted by Danmarks Tekniske Universitet Wind Energy department.  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 Jan 2015 and June 2015 (Task 5.6)
  • Research seminars held December 2013 and July 2014 (Task 5.2)
  • Industrial Days held December 2013, July 2014, January 2015 and June 2015 (Task 5.5)
  • Complementary skills training held July 2014, Jan 2015 and June 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) and Roskilde (June 2015).

Meetings of the Supervisory Board and Training Steering Committee, which oversee MEDOW’s researcher training activities took place at the Roskilde meeting.  Discussions  on future network training weeks, including the MEDOW conference day as part of the IEEE EnergyCon conference in early 2016 took place.

Work Package 6: Training of individual ESR/ER

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) have now been 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)
  • Secondments are well underway. 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 11 international conference 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)
  • 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

As part of the January 2015 network meeting, we had our Mid-Term Review meeting with our Project Officer from the European Commission and an External Expert Reviewer.  Jun Liang and Cath Roderick from Cardiff University presented an overview of the network’s activities, and then each of the recruited researchers presented themselves and their progress.  We are pleased to say that we received some very positive feedback from our Project Officer!

The first Periodic Report was submitted to the European Commission in May 2015.  At the time of writing, we await feedback.

  • The MEDOW website was set up in summer 2013 (Task 8.1 and Deliverable 8.1)
  • Network meetings 1-5 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 (Task 8.3 and Deliverable 8.3)
  • Successful Mid-Term Review meeting with European Commission in January 2015
  • Grant Agreement and Concortium Agreement completed in 2013 (Milestone 8.1)
  • Recruitment of all ESRs by Spring 2014 and all ERs by Spring 2015 (Milestone 8.2)