Newest branch: EIRES Hydrogen Community
At TU/e, a myriad of researchers is working on hydrogen. Research challenges vary from how to generate hydrogen through intermittently driven electrolyzers, to how hydrogen storage is used to manage demand and consumption of electricity under a wide variety of operating conditions. Recently, we have taken the initiative to bring together all of these researchers in a dedicated EIRES Hydrogen Community.
Besides organizing its research in focus areas, EIRES also stimulates and supports the development of communities around dedicated topics like batteries, iron power, heat in the built environment, photovoltaics and future chemistry. A new branch on this tree was proposed by various EIRES-researchers to be revolving around hydrogen. The great ambition is to develop a Hydrogen Community to bundle efforts, share experience on this topic, enhance TU/e’s contribution through internal and external collaboration and showcase the university’s research and education on hydrogen.
Student-assistant Kathinka Umbach is entrusted with the task to help organize this community. The enthusiastic master student Industrial Engineering explains what the initiative is all about. ‘We are currently at the beginning of this development,’ she says, ‘we are building the community following guidelines from the Center of Unusual Collaborations (part of the EWUU alliance). As a first step, we have established an ad-hoc committee consisting of about 14 people from different departments, and we’ve held our first meeting to determine the scope of the community.’
Inclusive community
The aim of the community is to create a central knowledge base on hydrogen, strengthen collaborations between all those working in this domain, and raise the next generation of hydrogen experts, Umbach says. The community is to be an open and inclusive environment, which welcomes anyone doing any type of research related to hydrogen, ranging from production and storage to usage and societal implications. Once new connections have been established, the goal is to develop joint applications for research funding and educate the next generation of researchers. The community can also serve as a one stop shop for people from inside and outside of university who want to connect to the hydrogen-related research here.
One of the more concrete activities the community aims to develop is the organization of a Eurotech hydrogen summer school for PhD students, to follow up on two previous editions organized by DTU in Denmark and the École Polytechnique in France. ‘Right now, we are primarily growing the community,’ says Umbach. ‘The aim is to fully take off in September 2024, and from then on organize dedicated activities such as lectures and networking events. For now, I want to call out to all scientists at TU/e who find this initiative appealing to sign up for our newsletter and join us in our efforts.’
Interested to join? Drop an email to eires@tue.nl
