Faglige nøgleord: Mathematical modelling, sustainability, transport, climate change
Oplæg tilgængeligt på: Engelsk og tysk
I am in the second year of my PhD titled "Sustainable Roadmap Scenarios for the Electrification of Long-Haul Transport". I work at the Transport Policy Section in the Department of Technology, Management and Economics at DTU and am moreover affiliated to the Centre for Absolute Sustainability at DTU. In this project we aim to explore how the future of road-based freight transport (in other words: trucks) could look like in the future and if these changes will allow us to have a sustainable freight transportation system.
In our globalized world, a well-functioning freight system plays a central part. The majority of goods are at some point transported by trucks, making this industry a very fundamental one. On the other hand, we know that our current freight transportation system is not sustainable. Not only does it lead to high carbon emissions, fueling the climate crisis, but these emissions have also not been reduced in the last decades.
With the rise of EVs, this might potentially finally change. The recent progress in technology makes electric trucks more and more feasible. The technological readiness itself does not necessarily lead to a swift implementation: In order for the transition to electric trucks to happen as efficient as possible, several challenges have to be overcome. For instance, currently and in the foreseeable future, electric trucks have a considerably lower range then their diesel counterparts, have higher upfront costs and need a not-yet-fully developed charging infrastructure.
We are developing mathematical models to address some of these problems.
Moreover, we assess the sustainability of electric and diesel trucks and finally evaluate if a freight system built on electric trucks could help us stay within the planetary boundaries.
I studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Bonn, Germany. After finishing my studies in 2020, I worked at the Fraunhofer Research Institute for over 4 years, developing professional software for industries in logistics. After a couple of years, I wanted to go back to more fundamental, but still applied research and work in transportation, as that is a field I deem very important for the green transition. Moreover, I started to really like Copenhagen and wanted to move here. Therefore, I was quite happy when I found a PhD position here, starting in the end of 2024.
For the presentation, I would propose to start with a brief introduction to the transportation sector; why it is important, what is being researched there, what impacts it has to everyday life. I would then continue by describing one of the problems we are researching, describe how we can formulate such complex problems in a mathematical way and give a brief glimpse into the relevant mathematical areas.
Moreover, I would talk about sustainability, explain why it is important to look at more then just climate change (ie also to biodiversity losses, depletion of materials etc.) and briefly explain how such assessments can be done via the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Then I would continue to explain what planetary boundaries are and how they can be a useful concept when thinking about the sustainability of different areas.
On the other side, I can happily talk about my journey; how it is to study math and computer science, what possible career options there are, how work in a research institute is etc.
I have experience presenting to high-school classes, having done so on multiple occasions in the past on days aimed to give students orientation about possible university-/carrer-paths. I usually try to make my presentations as engaging as possible, by using small quizzes and exercise.