James Oxford receives prestigious IEEE DEIS Graduate Fellowship

The DCDYNAMIC consortium congratulates James Oxford from The University of Manchester on being awarded the 2025 IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) Graduate Fellowship.

The Fellowship is an internationally recognised award supporting outstanding early-career researchers in the field of dielectrics and electrical insulation. It provides USD 5,000 to develop innovative research ideas with the potential to advance dielectric science.

James’ Fellowship project addresses a key challenge in electrical treeing experiments. Conventional testing uses rigid steel needle electrodes to initiate electrical trees in insulation materials, but when mechanical loading is applied voids and air gaps can develop between the sample and needle, compromising the measurements.

This Fellowship will enable research into the use of soft or liquid-like electrodes as an alternative. These soft or liquid-like electrodes can flex under mechanical loads, eliminating the limitations of using solid steel electrodes. . The project aims to generate new insights that could benefit a wide range of dielectric research applications.

The work closely supports DCDYNAMIC’s research into insulation ageing and electrical treeing under combined electrical and mechanical stresses. Improving the understanding of these mechanisms will support the development of reliable HVDC cable systems for future floating offshore wind applications.

James Oxford is thus in good company, as Fabian Bill from ETHZ and also member of the DCDYNAMIC consortium, received this fellowship back in 2023.

👏 Congratulations to James on this well-deserved achievement. The DCDYNAMIC consortium looks forward to following the progress of this exciting research.