Jethro Akroyd delivers keynote at Nexus Forum 2026

Assistant Research Professor Dr Jethro Akroyd delivered a keynote at Nexus Forum 2026, held at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, from 22 to 24 July. His talk, “Beyond Connected Digital Twins: The World Avatar for Carbon-Neutral and Resilient Energy Systems,” explained how knowledge models can be used to connect data, computational and physical agents to support low-carbon and resilient energy systems.

Jethro presented The World Avatar, an open digital system that links information, models and software from different fields. It gives shared meaning to data so that people and computers can find, combine and use it more easily. The aim is to help people understand how choices about energy, buildings, infrastructure, climate and society affect one another.

He showed how The World Avatar has been used in Pirmasens, Germany, to connect heat demand, weather, energy prices and district-heating equipment. Computer agents used this information to forecast demand and find more efficient ways to produce heat. The analysis found the potential to reduce operating costs by about 25 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by about 50 per cent.

Jethro also described work in Singapore on energy planning, air quality and environmental exposure. Turning to the planning of resilient infrastructure systems, Jethro highlighted CMCL's work on CReDo, the Climate Resilience Demonstrator. The project brought together data from Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks with flood scenarios to create a connected digital twin of water, telecommunications and electricity infrastructure. Using technology developed through The World Avatar, CReDo explored how flooding could cause failures to spread between networks and affect the services on which people depend.

He concluded that better connections between data, models and expertise can help decision-makers see the wider effects of their choices and plan a fairer, more resilient energy transition.

Ever wondered whether the world could run entirely on renewable electricity?

A new study published in Advances in Applied Energy explores the energetic feasibility of a fully renewable global electricity grid powered only by wind and solar. Framed as a thought experiment, the work investigates a theoretical “bounding case” — testing how far global interconnection alone could, in principle, reduce variability in renewable generation. The results suggest that global interconnection could reduce wasted renewable electricity by more than 90% compared with isolated regional grids.

The study examines a “transmission-only” scenario, isolating how much variability in renewable generation could be smoothed simply by moving electricity around the planet. The results indicate that transmission losses would average only about 3.6% of global demand — far lower than the losses associated with long-distance chemical energy carriers such as hydrogen.

The work provides a physical benchmark for future studies. By establishing an upper bound on what transmission alone could achieve, the research helps frame the scale of the global energy transition challenge.

CoMo group open to Feodor Lynen Research Fellows

In 2016, Prof. Markus Kraft was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award and is therefore eligible to host Feodor Lynen Research Fellows sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship covers the salary and travel expenses of researchers from Germany to work at the host institution for 6-24 months. In addition, the fellowship enables the successful candidate to apply for alumni sponsorship from the Humboldt Foundation after the end of the fellowship and become part of their international network of academics.

If you are interested in working at the University of Cambridge and in joining the CoMo group as a post-doctoral researcher, please check your eligibility on the official Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship website and familiarise yourself with the application procedure. You will need to write a research proposal that aligns with your professional expertise. The topic might be of computational or experimental nature but should lie within the research areas of the CoMo group.

Highly Commended: IChemE Global Awards 2025

The Computational Modelling and The World Avatar research team is proud to share that our project, “Revolutionizing Laboratory Automation Across Sectors and Regions with The World Avatar,” was Highly Commended for the Process Automation and Digitalisation Award at the IChemE Global Awards 2025.

The award acknowledges our work on the Digital Laboratory Framework, a knowledge-model-driven system that connects laboratory assets, software, and distributed experimental platforms via semantic interoperability and autonomous computational agents. Built upon The World Avatar, the Digital Laboratory Framework integrates laboratory operations, data provenance, optimisation workflows, and real-time experimentation across global sites.

Key contributors to this work include Dr Simon Rihm, whose doctoral research at CARES shaped the Digital Laboratory Framework architecture, and Professor Markus Kraft, who has led the development of The World Avatar. Demonstrations across the CARES Laboratory, the University of Cambridge, and the Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore (PIPS) have shown the potential to accelerate scientific discovery, reduce environmental impact, and support sustainable, automated research ecosystems.

The award was accepted on behalf of the team by Dr Jethro Akroyd at the ceremony in Manchester.

Completed Paper Series on Lab Automation

The publication of our latest article “The Digital Lab Facility Manager: Automating operations of research laboratories through ‘The World Avatar’", completes a series of papers detailing our approach to the transformation of research laboratories with the help of digital twins.

We introduce the Digital Lab Framework, a holistic approach to laboratory automation and digitisation powered by The World Avatar. This framework not only guides the development of flexible and distributed self-driving laboratories based on interoperable knowledge models – it also includes peripheral aspects such as building infrastructure and inventory management and thereby allows automation of tasks typically handled by lab managers or facility managers. The implementation of these different aspects is demonstrated based on different use cases in our Singapore-based chemistry lab.

Prof. Kraft awarded Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship

Professor Markus Kraft has been named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng). The Academy awards these fellowships to the nation’s best engineering researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs each year in recognition of their outstanding and continuing contributions to the profession.

For more details, see the department's recent profile article titled "Master of his Kraft" linked below.