01 May 2025
Three early career researchers at the 黑瓜吃料网 have been awarded postdoctoral fellowships under the Horizon Europe programme, winning funding that totals over €800,000.
The three Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral fellowship projects will focus on critical sustainability challenges through development of improved storm forecasting, early warning systems for flooding, and clean energy fuel cells.
These prestigious fellowships support PhD-holding researchers to expand their expertise through advanced training and cross-disciplinary collaboration across international boundaries.
The projects will run for a maximum of two years.
Dr Vraciu's project, "Understanding and PreDicting the Rapid development of storms: A new ForecasTing framework (UPDRAFT)," will develop an innovative method for representing convective storm clouds in weather forecasting models.
Current models struggle to accurately capture how quickly thunderstorms form and evolve. This work aims to provide meteorologists with more accurate tools to predict when and where dangerous storms will occur over land and track their development.
Beyond immediate weather prediction applications, the project will contribute to scientific understanding of storms and how they respond to climate change.
The research will be supervised by Robert Plant, Professor of Atmospheric Convection.
Dr Vraciu said, “being awarded this fellowship is a remarkable opportunity for me to join one of the world’s leading meteorological research departments.
“I hope that this work will provide the basis of a new approach to forecasting storm clouds and contribute to our understanding of the physical mechanisms that govern storm development.”
Under the project title "Flood fOREcasting with Satellite Imagery and Generative High-resolution Techniques (FORESIGHT)," Dr Mosaffa will address limitations in current flood early warning systems, which are hampered by the lack of accurate flood inundation maps.
The project will use state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and satellite data to forecast where and when flooding will occur with high-resolution maps.
FORESIGHT aims to establish foundations for the development of global flood forecasting systems, potentially saving lives and reducing property damage worldwide.
The research will be supervised by Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology.
Dr Mosaffa said, “I am honoured and excited to receive this fellowship for the FORESIGHT project.
“I look forward to advancing this work under Professor Cloke’s supervision, paving the way for a more accurate global flood forecasting system.”
Dr Han’s research focuses on proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), a promising future power source that uses hydrogen energy to generate electricity with water as the only byproduct.
The “Optimisation and Control strategy of Hydrogen Recirculation in PEMFC systems considering phase changes (OCHRE)” project addresses how hydrogen moves through these fuel cell systems.
When hydrogen gas flows through a fuel cell, not all of it reacts on the first pass. This work will focus on optimising the recirculation of this unused hydrogen while simultaneously managing water vapour condensation within the system.
OCHRE will contribute to significant improvements in hydrogen recirculation efficiency, which in turn will improve power output. These advancements could make these clean energy fuel cells more viable for widespread commercial applications.
The project will be supervised by Dr Chuang Wen, Associate Professor in the Department of Construction Management & Engineering.
We are in the process of finalising our postgraduate taught courses for 2026/27 entry. In the meantime, you can view our 2025/26 courses.
