IROE PhD Student Oscar Festa awarded position on the ICURe DISCOVER cohort

Final-year PhD student Oscar Festa was awarded a position on the March 2024 ICURe DISCOVER cohort, which is an 8-week, part-time online market discovery programme designed to support researchers and technicians in exploring commercial applications for their work.

As part of his PhD, Oscar is building an AI-supported concept design tool for FOW mooring systems (click here for an explanatory video). Over the course of the 8 weeks, Oscar engaged with key players in floating offshore wind to learn more about current needs in industry and how he can shape this tool to maximise impact.

After a productive two-day bootcamp, which initiated the cohort to key business and marketing topics, Oscar constructed his ‘market discovery plan’. This included trips to two conferences: Floating Wind Europe in Berlin, and Wind Europe in Bilbao. Both trips proved highly successful, and allowed Oscar to connect with wind farm developers, technology providers, and engineering consultancies to gain valuable insights into the current needs of the floating wind industry.