Miguel Mendez has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project "RE-TWIST"
05/09/2024
Congratulations to Professor Miguel Mendez who has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project "RE-TWIST" (REinforcement TWInning SysTems).
This project aims to revolutionize digital twins in engineering by merging machine learning with traditional physics-based models in a novel framework known as "Reinforcement Twinning" (RT). This approach leverages real-time data to simultaneously train a "control agent" for system optimization and a "twinning agent" for digital twinning. These agents interact through various mechanisms, leveraging each other's experience to boost their learning efficiency and overall performance. RE-TWIST aims to deploy RT on key engineering challenges, such as optimizing wind turbine operation, improving drone flight dynamics, controlling propellant sloshing for naval and aeronautical applications, and thermal management of cryogenic liquid storage. These systems lie at the heart of global challenges in engineering and sustainability, and RE-TWIST aims to provide new pathways for developing intelligent, self-learning systems to help us face the ever-growing need for green energy.
European Research Council (ERC) has announced the award of 494 Starting Grants to young scientists and scholars across Europe. The funding - totalling nearly €780 million - supports cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities. It will help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their most promising ideas
EU Research Commissioner, Iliana Ivanova: “The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges. In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue. Congratulations to all!”