PhD student in Meteorology with focus on high-fidelity wind farm modelling

Are you interested in working as a PhD student with the support of competent and friendly colleagues in an international environment? Are you looking for an employer that invests in sustainable employee ship and offers safe and favorable working conditions? We welcome you to apply for a PhD position in Meteorology with focus on high-fidelity wind farm modelling at Uppsala University, Campus Gotland.

The Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University is Sweden´s largest and most versatile department of its kind with approximately 280 employees. Our activities are interdisciplinary and combine natural science and technology with social science. We have research programs in air, water and landscape science; geophysics; natural resources and sustainable development; petrology, mineralogy and tectonics; paleobiology, and wind energy. By investigating the history of Earth, we understand how our planet has developed over time and how sustainable development benefits from this knowledge. Read more at: The Department of Earth Sciences.

The Wind Energy Section is located at Campus Gotland, an international campus in the middle of world heritage town Visby. Our division is engaged in activities related to wind power project development and sustainable energy transition. These activities include teaching, research and outreach. The group currently consists of about 25 persons who focus on the high fidelity modeling, planning, development and management of wind power projects as well as on sustainable energy transition. These individuals have a range of backgrounds and the group has competences in technical, natural- and social science. The group’s teaching consists of both campus and distance education at the bachelors level and beyond. With us you will find a pleasant workplace in a unique environment.

The section will expand in the coming year, we will hire six new PhD students with focus on wind energy. This is one of these six positions and the research project is a collaboration with Vattenfall Europe Windkraft GmbH and the office in Hamburg where the Offshore Wind Resource and Production section is mostly located.

The Wind energy division is located at Campus Gotland, an international campus in the middle of world heritage town Visby. Read more on the division´s website. 

About Vattenfall
Vattenfall is one of Europe"s largest electricity generators and producers of heat. It operates in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It’s strategy is to reduce emissions from power generation with a road map aiming at achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Read more here: www.vattenfall.com

Duties
Trends such as larger wind farms and larger wind turbine rotors require high fidelity models such as large-eddy simulation (LES) to predict and understand the underlying aerodynamic and meteorological phenomena. Within this PhD project you will be part of a research group that focuses on fluid mechanics of individual wind turbines and wind farms. The project is concerned with the development of new modelling capabilities of an established numerical model.

This project is a part of a large international academic collaboration network within Marie Curie and the project AptWind. The Atmospheric Physics and Turbulence for Wind Energy (AptWind) Doctoral Network provides training for a new creative, entrepreneurial, innovative and resilient industry-oriented academic generation apt to face current and future challenges at the frontier of research within atmospheric flow physics and turbulence for wind energy applications, where the trained Doctoral Candidates will be able to convert knowledge and ideas into new products, and services for economic and social benefit. AptWind is funded by Horizon Europe through grant number 101119550. For more information visit www.aptwind.eu

As a PhD student within AptWind you will be one out of 15 PhD students in a large international consortium gathering the most important academic and industrial actors within the field. This will provide an excellent platform for a future career in academia or industry.

The primary focus will be on studying very large rotors and wind farms, especially on how the physics on the different layers of the atmosphere affect the flow within these large wind power farms. We will study how well today’s models are able to reproduce flow in and around current and future generations of very large solid turbines located in very large wind farms. Especially, we aim to study farm to farm interaction that is becoming more and more interesting since we are erecting a large number of large wind farms in places such as the North and Baltic Seas.

In this particular PhD project, you will be enrolled as a PhD student at Uppsala University in close collaboration with Vattenfall. The PhD student will mainly be located at Uppsala University Campus Gotland. Within the four years, the PhD student will have an external research stay of 18 months at Vattenfall Hamburg in Germany. You will have supervisors from both academia and industry. In addition, the AptWind will facilitate a number of training events spread over Europe related to your research project. 

Requirements
To meet the entry requirements for doctoral studies, you must

• hold a Master’s (second-cycle) degree in meteorology, physics or engineering, or
• have completed at least 240 credits in higher education, with at least 60 credits at Master’s level including an independent project worth at least 15 credits, or
• have acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way.

Knowledge in fluid dynamics, turbulence and numerics are required alongside experiences in using advanced CFD tools and programming in object-oriented languages.

In addition the candidate needs to possess the following specific requirements from the AptWind consortium:

• The candidate should not have lived more than 12 months (1 year) during the last 36 months (3 years) in the country where the University is located, in this case Sweden.
• The candidate is to spend a minimum of 18 months in the company, in this case Vattenfall Hamburg , Germany.
• The candidate will have to travel for conferences and training around Europe.

For personal characteristics, the applicant should be independent, flexible, high achievement orientated and possess a high ability to cooperate.

Additional qualifications
Experience in the development of advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools is meritorious, in particular using the Lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM). This ability must be supported by programming experience, both in codes made from scratch and also in the improvement of already existing complex codes.

Furthermore, academic and/or industrial experience in the field of wind power is a merit. So it is important to remark that the candidate should feel comfortable working both in academic as well as in the industry working groups.

The application should include a letter describing the applicant, his or her qualifications. It should also include CV, copies of diplomas and certificates, thesis and publications. We encourage you to provide details of referees and/or attach one or more letters of recommendation. Applicants for this position, accept that Uppsala University and the rest of the AptWind consortium evaluate the application.

Rules governing PhD students are set out in the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5, §§ 1-7 and in Uppsala University's rules and guidelines.

About the employment
The employment is a temporary position according to the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5 § 7 and Marie Curie Horizon Europe. Scope of employment 100 %. Starting date 15-08-2024 or as agreed. Placement: Visby, Gotland, Sweden.

For further information about the position, please contact: Professor and Head of section Stefan Ivanell, stefan.ivanell@geo.uu.se or +4618-471 83 60

Please submit your application by 6 of May 2024, UFV-PA 2024/1215.

Are you considering moving to Sweden to work at Uppsala University? Find out more about what it´s like to work and live in Sweden.

About Campus Gotland: Uppsala University Campus Gotland offers the best of two worlds: the full-scale university’s broad offering and weight and a unique, small-scale campus in an interdisciplinary research environment. Campus Gotland is a hub for the University’s research and education in sustainability. Find out what it’s like to live on Gotland.