PhD projects

Background

Rail degradation poses a significant threat to railway safety and cost efficiency. Initiated rail cracks are not easily detectable nor predictable; they are expensive to repair and expensive not to repair, and dangerous to ignore. Currently, planning of rail maintenance is performed in a heuristic manner leading to either unneeded maintenance or too late interventions, both cases resulting in decreased life service of the rails. In recent years, predictive maintenance approaches for rail defects have been pursued actively, but there is room for significant improvement through further model development.

Project Description

Our project aims to optimize maintenance of rails using a mathematical modeling approach based on advanced data analysis in a predictive setting. We seek to do so by developing a stochastic forecast model for in-service rail wear and defects, providing a rigorous mathematical basis for estimating prediction uncertainty. This is relevant because accurate defect predictions improve the knowledge foundation for maintenance decision-making which can, if performed prior to defect formation, increase the service time of the rails. Secondly, we seek to optimize maintenance decision-making under uncertainty. This is relevant because the rail defect predictions should be utilized in a maintenance setting with limited resources to reduce life-cycle costs, carbon footprint, and operational disturbances optimally for the entire rail network. We aim to conduct careful evaluation of model performances in a commercial setting with a quantification of its gains compared to baseline maintenance planning to justify model applicability.;

Perspective

Implementation of the project results are tested with industrial collaborators during the project and fully applied after project completion. For a successful implementation, two stages need to be completed:

1. Verification. Working with the railway manager to prove the effectiveness of the developed model under local operational settings.
2. Implementation. Once proven effective, a full model implementation tailored to specific requirements of the individual railway manager is executed.

The project goal is a developed high-performing technology within predictive maintenance for rails, with an inherent potential for model expansion to other linear asset domains.

Principal Supervisor: Steven Harrod.

Project Period: February 2024- January 2027.

Background

The prevalence of hybrid work has expanded following the COVID-19 pandemic, especially within public organizations, compared to pre-pandemic. Hybrid work is a mixture of working onsite and offsite, e.g., from home, reducing physical proximity through increased virtuality. Nevertheless, hybrid work challenges collaboration, e.g., knowledge sharing and spontaneous coordination. Due to limited research about hybrid work collaboration post-pandemic, this study sets out to explore how public organizations experience collaboration when working hybrid and how to improve future practices.    

Project Description

With the aim of exploring collaboration when working hybrid post-pandemic, this study applies a longitudinal multi-case study with empirical data from interviews with managers and safety representatives, workshops with employees, and surveys. Secondly, this study explores how future collaborative practices in hybrid work can be improved through experiments - a method that is connected to the action research tradition (Grosen & Edwards, 2023). These experiments are co-created with employees and aimed at solving challenges related to hybrid work collaboration through micro changes (e.g., routines). Through a bottom-up approach to the evaluation of experiments, these experiments will provide knowledge about how organizations can improve future hybrid work practices, and how experiments and evaluation can emphasize learning during this process.   

This PhD is a part of the SPACE project, which is a collaboration between the Technical University of Denmark and HK Trade Union.   

Perspective

The overall purpose of this Ph.D. is to provide more knowledge about hybrid work collaboration post-pandemic, which can guide future organizations when practicing hybrid work, and qualify research and methods when investigating hybrid work. 

Principal Supervisor: Professor Christine Ipsen, Strategy and Leadership Development

Project Period: November 2022- October 2025.

Background

In pursuit of fossil fuel independence by 2050, the Danish government is planning to introduce a new concept called energy islands, with the goal of connecting power grids of multiple countries and transporting gigawatts of energy from surrounding offshore wind farms to the shores of these countries. The North Sea Energy Island, in particular, has a long-term goal of achieving a 10 GW capacity. The stakes are high, as a failure in its operation could potentially cause a blackout of the entire European electricity system. Therefore, extensive research and development efforts are necessary to ensure the stable and reliable operation of these energy islands.

Project

Unlike traditional power systems, the Danish energy islands will be a 100% renewable system powered by wind, which lacks system inertia to help balance the island in the event of a sudden drop in energy supply. Innovative solutions will have to be developed and matured to enable this. Therefore, this PhD project aims to address stability issues arising from the lack of inertia and low short-circuit power in 100% converter-based energy islands and provide viable solutions. Our hypothesis is that this issue can be resolved through coordinated control of power electronic converters present in energy islands and introduction of new control techniques for each of those converters. The goal is to first perform all simulation studies using PSCAD and MATLAB/Simulink. And then test the proposed control algorithms and techniques in real time by performing experimental and Hardware-in-the-Loop tests using real converters and OPAL simulator.

Perspectives

The results of my research will provide a coordinated control system for power electronic converters within energy islands. It will also introduce novel control techniques for each of these converters, aimed at resolving stability issues arising from the lack of inertia and low short-circuit power in fully converter-based systems. This research will establish guidelines for developing stability assessment criteria for energy island systems. Ultimately, these endeavors will expedite the deployment of wind energy and facilitate the transition to a power system based on renewable sources

Principal Supervisor: Mehdi Savaghebi

Section:  Energy Technology and Computer Science

Project Period: 2023-2026

Baggrund

The strategy of Banedanmark, the Danish railway infrastructure owner is to “develop and build an attractive, green, safe and efficient railway, by delivering on the three core priorities: Punctuality, Projects, and Orderliness.” Projects at Banedanmark are highly complex because the construction projects must be coordinated with the daily operation of the network, ongoing mega-projects such as the Signalling and Electrification programmes and the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Furthermore the construction, renewal and maintenance projects are most often hybrid projects since they typically include IT development for the power or signalling systems.

Project

Based on interviews with European owner organisations, Winch and Leiringer (2016) proposed a framework of the capabilities that a “Strong Owner” organisation needs to possess. This project proposes to develop this framework by testing it in the context of the Danish railway owner. This will be done by first gauging the level of maturity of Banedanmark as an organisation against the “Strong Owner” framework, then to identify the most important areas for development. Once the results from the above are received, the project will be approached from the perspectives of the three “enabler” domains: systems, projects and people.

Perspectives

At present, there is a need to improve the planning and execution of rail construction and renewal projects, with a focus on delivering on time and to budget. When projects are not completed on time, this directly affects the punctuality and reliability of the service, which reduces the attractiveness of this mode of transport relative to less environmentally friendly modes. 

Principal Supervisor / Co Supervisors: Christian Thuesen, DTU; Søren Stentoft Herping, Banedanmark; Thomas Gottschalck, Implement Consulting

Background

As student populations are ever changing, identifying underlying and existing reasons for student persistence is important. Understanding and addressing these factors can help universities further develop supportive environments for engineering students, leading to improved engagement, motivation, and ultimately higher persistence rates.

Project

This project aims to investigate factors influencing student persistence in engineering education. Higher education is known to contribute to improved life quality and societal equity, and there is a growing demand for STEM graduates, particularly in engineering disciplines. However, various challenges hinder students from persisting in engineering degrees, posing a challenge for universities, and potentially leading to lower graduation rates compared to other disciplines. A students' decision to persist or leave their engineering studies can be for number of reasons. The transition to university, perception of competence, sense of belonging, perceived autonomy, emotional intelligence, and difficulty of foundational subjects like math and physics can influence student persistence. 

Perspectives

The study seeks to shed light on these factors and how didactical strategies in universities can provide further support to enhance student retention and success in engineering education. 

Section: Ingeniørdidaktik og -pædagogik

Background

Society is facing a tremendous amount of ‘wicked problems’ such as climate change, pandemics, and inequality. The technology field plays an important role in developing solutions tackling ‘wicked problems’ through ‘social innovation’. However, the technology field faces a challenge: collaboration between people with diverse backgrounds and life experiences is found to be essential for solving wicked problems, but the field lacks diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity. This project sets out to shed further light on gender and ethnic diversity in engineering education with the aim of supporting the technology field in fostering diversity for social innovation purposes. 

Project

The empirical setting of this project is DTU, where fieldwork is conducted amongst students going through social innovation processes at innovation courses. Through observation and interviews, the project explores how gender and ethnic diversity influence social innovation processes and their outcome as well as how engineering students work to construct professional identities at the nexus of profession, gender, and ethnicity.

Perspective

With increased knowledge about the mechanisms at play in engineering education, the project has potential to influence the diversity practices in educational institutions with the purpose of stimulating diversity within the technology field in the long run and thereby make the field better equipped to tackle wicked problems.

The ph.d.-project is part of Diversity In Technology funded by Carlsberg Foundation.

Principal Supervisor: Lærke Højgaard Christiansen

Section: Strategy, Organization and Leadership

Project period: Aug 2022 – Aug 2025

Background

Collaborations between universities and firms are among the most fundamental mechanisms that drive innovation processes in our knowledge society. Lately, such collaborations have been shaped in a multitude of organizational forms, from research contracts to students’ mobility, each one being different from the others. This is the result of different institutional logics (academic vs. commercial) and the multi-stakeholder nature of innovation collaborations. As the universities attempt to engage in parallel collaborations a constellation of societal actors, it is important to design interactions that balance out common interests – or shared value creation – so that meaningful engagement is created and knowledge flows are ensured.

Project

The PhD project is supported by both DTU Engineering Technology and DTU Entrepreneurship, which allows Giulio to engage with a multitude of entrepreneurship education courses and the larger innovation ecosystem. The overall objective is to develop frameworks and best practices that can sustain engagement in courses in collaboration with companies, thereby strengthening the knowledge recombination that underlies the university’s ecosystem. In the context of these peculiar courses, this has soon translated into understanding how stakeholders interact with conflicting interests that reflect different value creation approaches. The focus of the PhD project, then, is to examine the directionality between value creation dynamics and the strategic design of entrepreneurship education courses. Such analysis will be integrated also by an External Research Stay period at UC Berkeley, where Giulio will engage with a new ecosystem and course blueprints. 

Perspective

The research is generating finer-grained insights into how universities should deploy their collaborations portfolio in experimental arenas with the broader aim of engaging companies through multiple touch-points and recursive feedback loops. As intended since the beginning, the PhD project is providing contributions both to the academic conversation and to the practitioners: first, the University-Industry Collaborations literature is being expanded towards a more encompassing multi-stakeholder perspective, culminating in a conceptual adaptation of the Service-Dominant Logic; second, local DTU course managers are co-learning about the value co-creation dynamics of their courses and their role in the overall university ecosystem. 

Principal Supervisor: Sara Grex, DTU Engineering Technology with Lars Alkaersig, DTU Entrepreneurship.

Section: Innovation Processes and Entrepreneurship

Project Period: April 2021 - March 2024

Background

Several transport megaprojects are under execution worldwide, such as the US$8.59 billion Danish‐German Fehmarn Belt tunnel and the California High-Speed rail project in America. A worldwide survey in 2018 shows that around 28% of projects fail due to imprecise cost estimates (Project Management Institute, 2018). It is expected that these projects are likely to exceed budget or miss scheduled deadlines. This is a major concern to the government and taxpayers as it erodes public confidence in the government. Thus, this research aims to improve the performance of megaprojects so that they can be delivered on time and within budget.

Project

In achieving the delivery objectives of mega transport infrastructure, the topic of construction estimating, and management is paramount, yet due to magnified project characteristics, megaprojects are always over budget and delivered late. This Ph.D. project is about understanding the methods used in developing costs and schedules on selected projects and how accurate they are. We explore the appropriateness of the cost and schedule control forecasting methods on selected mega projects. Finally, we examine how regional contracting methods and government processes relating to cultural qualities affect the cost and schedule management of selected megaprojects.

Perspective

The project will contribute to the available knowledge on the control and accountability of transport infrastructure mega projects. Notably, it will increase understanding of how better project estimation, governance, and contractual management can control cost overruns and schedule delays affecting mega projects. 

Principal supervisor: Steven Harrod

Section: Mobility, Environment, and Infrastructure.

Period: 2022-2025

Background

Construction practices are unsustainable as they contribute to the exceedance of absolute environmental boundaries. To attain international goals of keeping the resource consumption within the planetary boundaries, there is a need to reduce the footprint and double the circular material use rate. Academic and industry reviews identify the importance and challenges of implementing circular economy in construction. Especially challenges and opportunities related to value-chain and documentation are currently not supported by systematic research and development activities. 

Project

Platform thinking has developed significantly from the seminal work by Meyer & Lehnerd on product platforms to platform economies based on digital markets. While the technical perspective views platforms as “sets of stable components that support variety and evolvability in a system by constraining the linkages among the other components”, the ecosystem perspective focuses on the actors and infrastructures for organizational learning that allow for optimization across the value chain. By optimizing products, processes, and division of labor, platforms maximize value while minimizing waste. Platforms have proven successful strategies for achieving long-term strategic benefits in industries like automotive, aerospace & defense; their application in construction is limited. Also, there are limited examples of leveraging platforms for sustainability—and even less for circularity. Thus, there is potential for developing platforms that improve the competitiveness of circular construction solutions to support the reduction of the construction sectors’ absolute impact on the environment. 

Perspectives

The overall objective of this project is to investigate the question, whether platforms support the scaling of the circular economy in the construction sector. Thereby, this project aims to contribute to the theory and practice of the shift from a linear to a circular organization of value chains in the construction industry and deliver insights for other industries as well.

Principal Supervisor: Christian Thuesen

Section: Bygningsteknologi og processer

Project Period: 2023-25

The Industrial PhD explores the intersection of agile and hierarchical organizing in the financial sector. The context of the financial sector implies an extensive need to ensure stability and compliance while also pushing for technological adoption and market adaptability. This has led to hybrid organizing, where the intermingling and simultaneous use of two fundamentally different organizational logics and development approaches causes tensions in the intersection.

Project

The aim of the Industrial PhD is to identify the leadership challenges emerging when agile and hierarchical organizing intersect and how these challenges can be mitigated at an organizational and leadership level. The PhD is based on a qualitative case study based on interview, workshops, observations, and documents.

Perspective

The outcome from my research will (hopefully) provide insights on the leadership challenges and practices involved in mitigating the intersection challenges between the two ways of organizing. It provides knowledge on organizing in post-hierarchical organizations, where I problematize the possibilities and limitations of hybrid organizing where self-organizing agile teams, distributed leadership and autonomy intermingle with the traditional hierarchy and formal leadership roles.

Principal Supervisor: Nikolaj Stegeager, AAU & Claus Elmholdt, LEAD. Iben Stjerne is supervisor from DTU Engineering Technology.

Research Group: Strategy and Leadership Development.

Project Period: August 2022 - October 2025

Background

The temporary stays (TS) have been established in all Danish municipalities as a post-hospital structure to receive citizens after a period of hospitalization. These mostly elderly, vulnerable patients, often with several illnesses, and receiving multiple medications are considered too healthy to be at the hospital, and too sick to go home. With accelerated discharge processes, TSs are expected to play a major role in the sector transition of the future; however, very limited knowledge is available on citizens’ care pathway (flow) up to and after visiting a TS, their morbidity, mortality, and consumption of healthcare resources at TS units.

Project Description

The main objective of this project is to investigate: How to leverage citizens’ medical event history (care pathways) to optimize the use of temporary stays in municipalities of Denmark and improve the quality of care that patients receive during and after the stay? This study applies quantitative methods on medical history data from Danish health registries and is based on a collaboration with 15 municipalities, which provide information on citizens admission to the temporary stays. Exploratory process mining techniques are utilized to extract patterns of medical event sequences from register data. Artificial intelligence techniques will then be used to develop predictive models for admissions to the temporary stays. AI models are expected to predict outcomes such as the length of stay or the number of re-admissions to temporary stays within a certain timeframe.

Perspective

This study aims to provide knowledge on the performance of the Danish temporary stays in relation to the citizens’ care pathway. This knowledge can help decision-makers evaluate the current state of the system and plan for future improvements in the performance of the temporary stay units and the quality of care for elderly patients and potentially reduce costs. Additionally, this research contributes to the practice of data-driven process analytics and decision making in healthcare domain in particular, and in all organizations in general.

Principal Supervisor: Kathrin Kirchner, Strategy and Leadership Development

Project Period: August 1, 2023 – July 31, 2026.

BACKGROUND

Putting the work organization in municipal temporary stays (MTS) under scrutiny, is important to understand how continuity is supported, in a large but undescribed sector – a public tax-funded black box. Instigated by comprehensive reforms and demographic developments, the demand for municipal healthcare has been increasing throughout the past 10-15 years. MTS treat and care for approximately 60% of the highly complex patients that once belonged in hospital care, under various undescribed conditions. It is necessary to understand how organizational pre-requisites shape and determine the work situation and its cohesion to continuity principles.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The PhD project is a predominantly qualitative assessment of the work organization of multiple different MTS and their options for creating health in (mis)alignment with the governing principles for healthcare delivery, particularly continuity. First, we take a descriptive approach to understanding and defining what is the core task and its pre-requisites and discuss how these align with current knowledge on the conditions for continuity in healthcare. Secondly, we uncover the organizational-contextual events possibly explaining the local evolution of MTS comparing with register-based effects on different proxies for continuity, in each local context. Thematic analysis will contribute with cross case themes to identify what may be challenging to continuity. Thirdly, guided by these findings, we make an in-depth ethnographic study on the daily work and how continuity may or may not be supported contributing with grounded theory on the consequences of relocating responsibilities for continuity in municipal healthcare.

PERSPECTIVE

The outcome from our research will provide much needed recommendations for the education of healthcare professionals, about the competence needed in this rising genre of healthcare work. Concurrent with political agendas to further reform the distribution of responsibilities in municipalities and on the efforts made in elderly and social care, even basic knowledge on the efficacy of work practices in municipalities is crucial for meaningful allocation of resources. We will point to the organizational pre-requisites that are crucial to sustain a professional and ethical level.

Principal Supervisor: Kasper Edwards, Strategy and Leadership Development

Project period: February 2023 - January 2026

Background

The cutting-edge innovation of the Information and communications technology (ICT) revolution, the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), and the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) mobile communications are expected to be the next attention in wireless communication and networking. The role of the Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol in securing communication is the most crucial component to be implemented in the new 6G network. The AKA protocol is not only facilitating to guarantee of the security of communication between users and the network by verifying the identity of each entity involved but also establishing a shared secret key for encrypted information.

Project

The current standards for traditional symmetric cryptography have been developed and optimized for AKA protocol in 5G communications. Moving to 6G with the upcoming quantum technology as well as when it comes to resource-constrained devices, these primitive standards are very difficult to implement and impossible to resist with the quantum attack. Recent developments in the lightweight post-quantum cryptography scheme have heightened the need for proving the feasibility to implement in a resource-constrained environment. Based on the phenomenon of the advent of the IoT and the upcoming 6G mobile network, there is a need for alternatives to tackle quantum attacks as well as to obtain lightweight authentication. Therefore, research is needed to design the precise lightweight AKA protocol with post-quantum algorithms in order to satisfy the envisioned performance and functionality of the 6G architecture including wireless technologies from the Internet of Thing (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) domains, such as LoRaWAN and Zigbee.

Perspectives

This research project aims to explore cryptography techniques and investigate the possibility to implement a hybrid solution that considers efficiency lightweight computational cost as well as suits 6G application scenarios, for instance, Vehicle-to-everything (V2X), Device-to-Device (D2D), and M2M. It can contribute to the future unified security architecture for the 6G network. Moreover, the hybrid technique must ensure and satisfy the basic security essentials such as confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity when the data are transmitted over the network. It is also expected to bring significant benefits in the implementation of 6G.

Principal Supervisor: Birger Andersen

Section:  Energy Technology and Computer Science

Project Period: March 2023 - March 25