Research Assistant, Analysis of offshore wind farm cluster wake measurements

Your tasks

Future energy systems will rely on large wind farm clusters with hundreds of turbines. The wake, i.e. the downstream flow, of a cluster reduces the energy yield of neighbouring wind farms. The wind industry is demanding a better insight into cluster wakes and their mitigation for the further expansion of offshore wind. 

The main objective of your position is to enhance the understanding of the effects of a wind farm cluster on the wind flow in front and behind it. Scanning lidar (light detection and ranging) devices will be employed to measure horizontal wind fields in an offshore cluster of more than 1 Gigawatt capacity. 

Among others, your tasks will comprise:

• Analysing measurements of cluster wakes with scanning lidars at different meteorological conditions. Our lidar & wakes team, with 20 years of lidar experience, will support you.
• Using data-driven methods to combine lidar measurements, meteorological information, and operational wind farm data
• Cooperating closely with the wind farm operator and researchers performing high-fidelity simulations, developing engineering models and investigating satellite-based measurements.

Your profile

Requirements for employment include:

• a qualifying university master’s degree in Physical Sciences, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, Renewable Energy or equivalent,
• profound knowledge and professional experience of fluid dynamics aspects of wind energy conversion especially of wind farm wakes and statistical analysis of large data amounts
• professional experience of at least one year in the analysis of long-range lidar wind measurements
• extensive experience in programming with at least Matlab or Python,
• high motivation and ability to jointly work on applied research topics,
• very good English skills.
• good German skills.

We offer

We offer you the opportunity to develop your scientific career in a young and lively academic environment. You will be working in the WindLab – one of the university's most modern office and lab spaces – while you will also have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your further scientific qualification is actively supported by, e.g., 

• multidisciplinary cooperation with other researchers at ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES in Oldenburg,
• direct collaboration with industry while maintaining the links with our national and international partners in academia,
• optional secondment at an international research institute
• development of personal, scientific, and teaching skills through an individual training programme and selected teaching tasks,
• opportunities to present scientific results at international conferences and through peer-reviewed publications to extend your specific network.

Further, the university cares for a family-friendly working environment and offers a family service centre and children's daycare on campus. 

Our standards

The University of Oldenburg is dedicated to increase the percentage of female employees in the field of science. Therefore, female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance to § 21 Section 3 NHG, female candidates with equal qualifications will be preferentially considered. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualification.

Further information

Further information is available at www.forwind.de/en/ and https://uol.de/en/physics/research/we-sys.

The employment is initially limited to the end of the research project C2Wakes on 30.04.2026. 
The payment is based on the collective agreement for the public service in the German federal states, TV-L E13, for a 75% position.

Contact

For questions regarding this job opportunity, please contact Prof. Dr. Martin Kühn at +49(0)441/798-5061 or preferably by email at martin.kuehn@uni-oldenburg.de.