New Research Training Group approved at TU Hamburg
German Research Foundation supports goal of “Climate-Informed Engineering”
18.11.2024
Training the next generation of “climate-informed engineers”: This is the declared goal of Hamburg University of Technology. Its new Research Training Group (RTG) on “Climate-informed Engineering” aims to train a minimum of 20 researchers who can use advanced climate modeling and engineering solutions to create resilient infrastructure, sustainable resource management systems, and climate-adaptive materials. As announced by the German Research Foundation (DFG) on Monday, the RTG will be funded with approximately seven million euros over a period of five years, starting in October 2025.
Climate-informed engineering is timely given the need to address global challenges posed by the climate change and extreme weather events. Advances from the Industry 4.0 revolution, such as big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence, offer unprecedented opportunities to create effective climate-resilient solutions, aligning with several international initiatives like the UN Sustainabale Development Goals and the European Union's green transition. The RTG's unique approach combines high-resolution climate simulations from the Max-Planck-Institute for meteorology (MPI-M) with advanced engineering methods from TU Hamburg, thus enabling innovations like climate-adaptive materials and processes. Additionally, a partnership with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH) ensures international exposure and decision-making perspectives, enhancing the RTG’s global outreach. “The RTG on Climate-Informed Engineering seeks to equip a new generation of scientists and engineers with the skills to design resilient products and processes for challenging times,” explains RTG spokesperson Prof. Nima Shokri. Co-spokesperson Prof. Irina Smirnova adds: “The ultimate goal is to safeguard people, businesses, and ecosystems from threats such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, dust storms, hurricanes, and rising sea levels.”
The program emphasizes multidisciplinary education for PhD candidates, involving hands-on training and collaborations with scientists from 20 different national and international organizations and universities - including but not limited to: Princeton University, University of California Berkeley, ETH Zurich, Leibniz Universität Hannover, and TU Delft. The goals of the RTG aligns perfectly with the broader strategic research direction of TU Hamburg and also the key objectives of the UNU Hub on "Engineering to Face Climate Change" at TU Hamburg established in May 2024. “This funding enables us to equip future engineers and scientists with the knowledge, tools, and skills to adapt to and mitigate climate challenges, driving sustainable innovation and building resilience for a changing world,” says TU Hamburg-president Prof. Andreas Timm-Giel.
“Congratulations on this great success! The approval of a further Research Training Group is a sign of the impressive development of TU Hamburg. Training the next generation of engineers to find answers to the pressing questions of climate change through their work is a great benefit for research and the future of our city", says Hamburgs Science Senator Katharina Fegebank.
About the funding
In Research Training Groups, universities support researchers in the early stages of their careers; the DFG supports these institutions for a maximum of nine years. The aim of the research training groups is to prepare doctoral students intensively for academic work and to qualify them for the academic job market in thematically focused research programs. Earlier this year, TU Hamburg got approved for another research training group by name of "CAUSE - Concepts and Algorithms for - and Usage of - Self-Explaining Digitally Controlled Systems", that will be funded with around eleven million euros over a period of five years.
TUHH - Public Relations Office
Kaja Weber
E-Mail: kaja.weber@tuhh.de
