Centres for Doctoral Training

Doctoral Training Centre: E-Futures

Making the transition to a low carbon economy whilst ensuring a secure energy supply is one of the greatest challenges facing the UK today. To help meet this challenge, the University of Sheffield has succeeded in securing funding of £5.9 million from the EPSRC for a Doctoral Training Centre which will provide world-class training across a number of critical areas relating to the environment and sustainable energy.

The £9.1 million E-Futures centre will cover a broad range of energy-related topics, with the aim of training skilled researchers with a thorough grounding in technical and social issues of 'sustainable power generation' and 'demand reduction'. Students will gain a comprehensive overview of the factors that affect energy policy and the energy industry as well as developing a specialisation through their individual research projects.

E-Futures will be run by Centre Director Professor Anthony West of the Department of Engineering Materials at the University of Sheffield, and will draw together energy-related research currently spread across more than 13 departments in the 3 faculties of Engineering, Science and Social Science.

The E-Futures DTC received strong industry support, reflecting the University of Sheffield's existing expertise in energy research. Dr Dave Clarke, Head of R&D at E.ON, the global energy company, said: This DTC will play a key role in the drive to find future energy research professionals, with high level skills provided by the technical and personal training programmes of the Centre. Students at the Centre will receive an excellent grounding in a range of energy issues, and will be highly skilled, experienced and employable as a result.

Centre Director Professor Anthony West said: Our consortium combines knowledge and expertise in all aspects of energy, ranging from solar cells, combustion, transport systems, nuclear power and demand reduction to energy management, environmental issues of waste disposal, the carbon cycle and public perception of energy issues. At the end of their 4-year Doctorate programmes, our students are certain to be in high demand for employment across the energy sector.