Course Director: Dr Fiona Smail
Fiona completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, under Professor Martyn Poliakoff before moving to a research position within the Chemical Industry where she worked for 9 years. She returned to academia in 2009, joining the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy before moving to the Department of Engineering in 2013 as an embedded researcher. She commenced her postdoctoral work on the ANAM project in 2015.
Fiona has a strong interest in practical technology transfer, driven by the interaction between universities and industry. This started with her PhD in Nottingham where she helped develop the first continuous flow supercritical fluids reactor. Fiona moved to an industrial position to help implement the full continuous phase supercritical plant in 2001. A move across to academia in 2009 commenced her involvement in the CNT fibre spinning process which was based in the Department of Materials Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. Fiona helped implement the successful transfer of this technology to Tortech Nano Fibers Ltd who commissioned their process in 2011. Fiona transferred to the Department of Engineering as an embedded researcher in 2013 to work with Adam Boies research group, bringing together her knowledge of the fibre spinning process with their aerosol particle expertise and went on to join the ANAM project in 2015.
Since September 2021 she has been Course Manager for the MPhil in Energy Technologies.
Senior Academic Advisor : Professor Stuart Scott
Professor Scott’s research is focused primarily on carbon capture and other processes for the abatement of CO2. This includes detailed investigations into specific technologies, with a large effort on processes which are based on gasification, combustion and thermochemical cycles, as well as more general process and reactor modelling and sustainability assessment. Recent work has looked at combined gasification and metal oxygen donor processes (often called chemical looping combustion), in which the oxygen for combustion comes from a solid oxygen carrier (usually a metal oxide) rather than air. Professor Scott's research in this area goes from the understanding and development of the materials, through to lab-scale testing and process modelling of the scaled up systems. He also works on the modelling of carbon abatement technologies, from the reactor scale through to the process flow sheet and the wider system scale. This has led to work on Lifecycle Assessment of Biofuels, including those which make use of novel biological systems (i.e. algae).
Professor Scott runs the ET-A2 course.
Professor Nedunchezhian Swaminathan
Professor Swaminathan is another combustion expert and his research is in predicting the characteristics, such as heat release rate distribution, pollutants formation, combustion instabilities, etc., of fuel-lean combustion in gas turbine and IC engine conditions.
Professor Swaminathan is Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a Fellow and Director of Studies at Robinson College. His research is focused on carbon capture and storage, combustion modelling and physics, and the impact of combustion on the environment. His other interests include photography, gardening and carpentry.
Professor Swaminathan runs the Solar and Biomass core module in Renewable Energy ET-B3 together with Dr Smail.
Dr Tzia Ming Onn
Dr. Tzia Ming Onn is currently an assistant professor at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Engineering. He received his Bachelor of Science (BS) in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and earned his doctoral degree (PhD) from the University of Pennsylvania. His PhD thesis focused on thin film structures, heterogeneous catalysis, and emissions control. After obtaining his PhD, he worked as an integration yield/process development engineer at Intel Corporation, developing the company’s 4 nanometer process in the Thin Film/Planarization Division. After three years in industry, he returned to academia as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota and worked on programmable electrocatalysis. Dr. Onn began his position at Cambridge in the Fall of 2023. His research group currently focuses on developing nanocomposite-graphene-based materials and engineering interfaces to utilize renewable electrons for producing greener fuels and chemicals. Since most of the interesting phenomena happen at the interface, his research group aims to tune the desired electro/chemical/physical properties for different energy applications.
Dr Shreyas Mandre
Dr Shreyas Mandre is an Associate Professor of Fluid-Structure Interaction in the Department of Engineering. He is an engineer and an applied mathematician with a broad interest in all aspects of fluid dynamics. Previously, Dr Mandre served as a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, Assistant Professor in Engineering at Brown University and Associate Professor at the Warwick Maths Institute. His research topics range broadly, including topics such as flow-structure instabilities, volcanological fluid dynamics, splashing of droplets, surfactant transport, fluid-vegetation interaction, and many more, where the mathematical description provides a unifying treatment. His most recent research project involves studying interaction between miniature turbines by installing them in the Markham Wind tunnel.
Other academics lecturing on the course are Dr Bob Skelton, who will be giving lectures on the safety aspects of working in the energy sector and Dr Bryn Pickering.
Dr Bryn Pickering
Bryn is a Senior Energy Modeller at the Open Energy Transition, a non-profit organisation advancing the adoption of open-source energy system modelling software and data across industry and the public sector. He collaborates with transmission system operators, utility companies, and international NGOs to adapt scientific tools developed in academia for use in policy and investment decision-making.
Previously, Bryn was the Arup Official Fellow in Engineering at Girton College, Cambridge, and a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zürich. He continues to engage in research with international collaborators informally. His work focuses on the optimal design of resilient, climate-neutral energy systems, exploring the critical trade-offs required to transform how we meet energy demand. His research spans multiple spatial scales, from urban heat networks to continent-wide energy flows, and integrates insights from across disciplines to consider energy infrastructure within the broader systems that shape our lives.
Lecture courses are also given by post-doctoral teaching staff and we offer teaching assistance through PhD students and former alumni of the course.