MEET OUR SUPERVISORS
Luke, the Project Lead for the FRONTIErS Doctoral Network at the University of Nottingham, returns for another interview, this time focusing on his professional background and how the FRONTIErS initiative began. He also announced the first annual FRONTIErS training week at the University of Nottingham, which will provide fellows with a range of discipline-specific and transferable skills training in areas such as climate change, communication, and quantitative analysis.
Can you please provide some insight into your educational and professional background?
My name is Luke J Prendergast, and I am an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Nottingham. I specialise in structural mechanics and geotechnical engineering applied to transport infrastructure and offshore engineering problems. Originally from Ireland, I have a PhD from University College Dublin (2015), and a Bachelor of Civil and Environmental Engineering from University College Cork (2011). My work revolves around developing algorithms for damage detection of structures, and developing numerical models for analysing the response of offshore wind turbine foundations. I am particularly interested in the application of finite-element model-updating approaches to spring-beam systems used to estimate the properties of soil-structure interaction systems. Currently, I am Project Lead of the FRONTIErS Doctoral Network, which kicked off in late 2022.
What led to the creation of the FRONTIErS Doctoral Network?
I worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher with Prof. Ken Gavin at TU Delft until 2018, when I moved to Nottingham to take up my role as Assistant Professor. At this time, there was a natural urge to continue the collaboration with TU Delft. Having become acquainted with Prof. Marcos Arroyo of UPC and Prof. Gudmund Eiksund at NTNU, we set about creating the framework of what would eventually become the FRONTIErS Doctoral network. The impetus behind its development was to combine knowledge of the various projects ongoing in offshore wind foundation engineering in a formal training network, to create a team of highly-skilled graduates in the field. MSCA Doctoral Networks are a fantastic mechanism to facilitate industry and academic collaboration, and our wider consortium of industry-leaders have been central to exploiting this opportunity.
Have you had any prior experience with MSCA Programmes?
Personally, I had little experience with MSCA Programmes, but I have been acquainted with many MSCA fellows during my time as a PhD Researcher and later a Postdoctoral Researcher. I was always eager to develop a network of this kind given the high level of prestige associated with them, and the strong industrial collaboration they promise.
From your perspective, what are the primary benefits of participating in an MSCA doctoral network?
MSCA networks facilitate real-time collaboration between academia and industry to solve problems that are of mutual interest and societally relevant. Traditionally, academia has tended to operate in a silo whereby problems being solved rarely got translated to industrial applications, and barriers to exploitation were hard to overcome. MSCA networks, by embedding industry stakeholders at the heart of the governance and research execution, facilitate strong levels of cross-collaboration between parties, enabling the strengths of academic institutions be exploited for the good of the industry and general public. It is also fantastic to see the development of the fellows throughout the network, who are at the core of the programme, and who will become future leaders in this exciting industry.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the FRONTIErS network’s evolution by the program’s conclusion?
We will shortly host our first annual FRONTIErS training week at University of Nottingham, which will embed the fellows in a range of discipline-specific and transferrable skills training in climate-change, communication, and quantitative analysis, among other topics. FRONTIErS is evolving in real-time to match the challenges being faced by the industry, arming the fellows with the latest skills to solve these emerging problems. By the end if the programme, FRONTIErS will have deeply analysed 11 bespoke PhD topics in detail, with industrial and academic secondments having been undertaken, enabling the consortium establish the new state of the art in future problems to be addressed. It is envisaged that FRONTIErS is but the beginning of this exciting journey to expedite the green energy transition and remove the remaining barriers in the sector. I am very excited to see what comes next!