MPE CDT Reading student Cathie Wells has been awarded The Ivar Isaksen Prize for best early career presentation at The 3rd ECATS Conference (Network of Excellence on Aviation and Environment). The conference had been due to take place in Gothenburg, Sweden in April. Unfortunately due to the Covid19 outbreak, it was delayed until 13th to 15th October 2020 and became an online conference. The prize was “launched to celebrate the most inspiring, effective and professional presentation”. Cathie is the Prize’s first recipient and was awarded the Prize by the Committee at the end of the three-day conference.
The themes of the conference were:
- Propulsion Integration
- Airport Air Quality
- Aviation climate impact and mitigation concepts
- Green flight – Climate optimal flight trajectory
- Future materials for aircraft
- Cryogenic fuels / electrofuels
There was also a section for early career researchers. Originally Cathie had been asked to talk in both the Green Flight section and the early career researchers section, but when it became an online conference, the early career researchers who had relevant topics for the main conference spoke in their sections only and then there was an extra part at the end for the other PhD students.
Cathie said: “All talks were also shrunk down to ten minutes, which is really quite challenging! Luckily we practised looking at what is best to include in different lengths of talk with Justine in our MRes year, which proved very helpful. My talk was well received and afterwards I was on a discussion panel of four to answer questions.
Later I also answered some questions in the poster session on green flight (despite not being there as a poster presenter!) as this became another discussion session.
It was an excellent conference, covering a wide range of different possible solutions to make aviation more sustainable, but also examining the robustness of the measures currently being used to judge the effect aviation is having on the changing climate and vice versa.”
Here’s a screenshot of Cathie’s presentation:
