Location

School of Engineering (Building Y8) University of Birmingham

Dates

Monday 16 June (09:30) - Thursday 19 June 2025 (16:30)

Contact

• Summer School Chair: Professor Xiao-Ping Zhang
• Summer School Coordinator: Dr Nan Chen

BDSS 2025 "Accelerating Energy Transition towards Net Zero" is a 4-day event from 16 - 19 June, aiming to bring early career researchers and engineers to work together on a technical solution and business model for a real-world Energy Transition challenge proposed by our lead industrial partner, SSEN Transmission. Participants will have two days of workshops (technical presentations and soft skill training) with some opportunities of working in groups to develop their technical solution and business model, and then pitch to a judging panel mainly formed by industry experts on the third day. A post-competition one-day conference will bring international experts together to share their insights on how HVDC could benefit Net Zero. This year's BDSS brings academic researchers and industry engineers together to collaborate with each other, aiming to strengthen the knowledge and experience sharing between academia and industry and facilitate the personal development and networking of summer school participants. 

BDSS provides all participants with opportunities to work in groups on a real-world Energy Transition challenge. This will train the participants to consider both technical and economic aspects when they formulate solutions to real-world challenges to achieve Net Zero. By collaborating with researchers from other areas such as business and engineers from industry utility, participants are expected to develop their interdisciplinary research capability, practical engineering problem-solving ability, and networking. The collaboration between academic researchers and industry engineers can also benefit each other in developing their skills for transitioning to industry and leading research projects collaborating with university partners, respectively. Also, networking with keynote speakers will facilitate the early career development of all participants. Moreover, summer school participants will have the chance to take part in an interdisciplinary research on how to present to industry stakeholders more effectively.

This event is open to all PGR students, early career researchers and engineers from academia and industry, who are working in Net-Zero related disciplines in the UK.