Oxford Energy Network and ZERO Institute lunch a great success!
The Oxford Energy Lunches gather the vibrant, multidisciplinary community of Oxford academics, researchers, students and professionals who work in energy. The ZERO Institute (Director: Paul Shearing) and the Oxford Energy Network (Convener: Tina Fawcett) present their initiatives, and there’s an informal open mike for questions and announcements.
The Hilary term joint Oxford Energy Network and ZERO Institute lunch took place on Monday 23rd March at the new venue: the University Club. The lunch was well attended by students and academics; with over 60 people turning up.
The open mike session included announcements from the following people:
As a new member of the Engineering Science department, Deborah Greaves was introduced as the Statutory Professor of Civil Engineering. Prior to that she was Professor of Ocean Engineering, Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Decarbonisation and ORE, and the COAST Laboratory at the University of Plymouth with previous appointments at the University of Oxford, UCL and the University of Bath. She was awarded an OBE in 2018, was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and is President Elect of IMarEST in 2025. Her research interests include marine and offshore renewable energy, and physical and numerical modelling of wave-structure interaction. Contact Deborah [email protected]
Vafa Järnefelt is a DPhil candidate at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment. Vafa spoke about the growing importance of critical raw materials in the net-zero transition, as demand for them is expected to rise sharply. She emphasised that while circular economy solutions are part of the answer, they will not be enough on their own, and that replacing one scarce critical raw material (CRM) with another is not a sustainable long-term solution. Instead, she highlighted the need to accelerate innovation and investment in technologies that can reduce or avoid reliance on critical raw materials altogether, alongside better understanding how quickly such technologies can develop, scale, and contribute to 2040 and 2050 net-zero goals. Vafa is particularly interested in connecting with scientists working on novel CRM-free technologies and is keen to contribute to proposal development addressing these issues. Contact Vafa [email protected]
Tim Lennox is a Visiting Research Fellow seconded from the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. He is working at Oxford’s Institute for Net Economic Thinking to explore the Macroeconomics of Carbon Budget 7. This is an exciting multi-disciplinary decarbonisation project focusing on policy priorities. Tim is keen to foster further collaboration between academia and policy, such as through ZERO and OPEN. Project link https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/projects/macroeconomics-of-the-seventh-carbon-budget Contact Tim [email protected]
Lucia Corsini is looking for a two-year post doc engineer. If anyone is interested, here’s the link https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQQ359/postdoctoral-research-assistant-in-circular-economy-engineering. Contact Lucia [email protected]
Sam Li Shen is the Energy Teaching Coordinator responsible for developing the education portfolio. As part of the portfolio, they are launching a new CPD programme on infrastructure design and optimisation for net zero energy systems with cyber security consideration. The course details are being discussed internally and will be advertised as soon as details are confirmed. They aim to run the course in early December. Contact Sam [email protected]
David Wallom commented that for the 2026/27 cohort of the MSc in Energy Systems they have, for the first time, exceeded 300 applications for the 36 available places. As such a key part of the course is the individual research dissertation, they would like to invite as many people as possible within the University to suggest research projects for which they would be available to supervise students. Please contact [email protected] if interested. Contact David [email protected]