Learning from crises – doing research in a year like no other

Starting a postdoc may seem daunting, as you transition from a long period of supervised learning, to a phase of independent research. The Erwin Schrödinger fellowship provides an excellent opportunity for young researchers to make this transition in the best possible way. On the one hand, visiting a good lab/department abroad gives you the chance to keep learning and developing your own research agenda. Going abroad is an experience in every sense. From the professional perspective, you learn new processes, methodologies and working styles. From a personal perspective, cultural exchange opens your mind and helps you understand the world we share. On the other hand, the return phase provides the security of belonging to your host institution, which can set the basis for a stable research career in Austria.

Researching together for new strategies

For the research stay, I went to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) because I frequently met the Deputy Head of the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department, Wolf-Peter Schill, in the same conference sessions. In our discussions, we envisioned a joint research project that evolved to the research plan for the Schrödinger fellowship. The collaboration was fruitful, as we combined our areas of expertise, variable renewable energy and electricity storage, to study their interactions in the transition to a decarbonized economy. The preprint is available on ArXiv, and the final paper is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Resource Economics.