Dr Harry van der Weijde awarded Humboldt Fellowship
The Fellowship will allow Dr van der Weijde, who is Chancellor’s Fellow at the School of Engineering, to spend time at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), working on research related to analysing risk in consumer-centric energy markets.
Specifically, Dr van der Weijde’s project aims to develop and apply an interdisciplinary framework for investigating and optimising risk in increasingly consumer-centric energy markets – and by analogy, other sectors too.
This framework will be strongly based in economic theory while reflecting recent advances in behavioural economics – the study of psychology as it relates to the economic decision-making processes of individuals and institutions. It will be tested in a range of practical situations and settings, and is designed to be useful to stakeholders including policymakers and engineers.
This new research will build on Dr van der Weijde’s previous work modelling energy system expansion under uncertainty, and his wider interest in answering economic questions about engineering systems including energy and transportation using mathematical tools.
Depending on Covid-19 restrictions, Dr van der Weijde plans to spend significant time at the FAU in 2021, conducting research and building further connections between the School of Engineering and the FAU. He will be hosted by Prof. Dr. Veronika Grimm, Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at the FAU and one of German government’s most prominent economic policy advisors.
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellowships bring researchers from around the world to work in Germany. Awards from the Foundation are considered to be among the most prestigious and generous in Europe; the alumni network includes 50 Nobel laureates. Candidates are selected on the basis of an evaluation of their academic record and academic performance to date, as well as their future potential and the originality and innovation potential of their suggested research.