Research Professor David Infield has worked in renewable energy since completing his PhD in 1978, with a career spanning solar energy systems, wind energy technology and the integration of renewable sources into electricity supply systems. He joined Strathclyde in 2007 as Professor of Renewable Energy Technologies within the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, having previously founded the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST) at Loughborough University — now one of the UK’s leading centres for renewable energy teaching and research.

At Strathclyde, Professor Infield spent five years as Manager of the EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Wind Energy Systems, then played a leading managerial role as it extended into the Centre for Doctoral Training in Wind and Marine Energy Systems — part of the same unbroken run of national doctoral training leadership that continues today through CDT-WAMSS. He has since taken on the role of Research Professor, continuing an active research programme.

His WEC-affiliated research includes serving as Co-Investigator, alongside James Carroll (Principal Investigator) and Bill Leithead (Co-Investigator), on the SWEPT2 project — developing improved models of wind turbine wake behaviour and wake interactions using LIDAR measurement, aimed at reducing the larger-than-expected wake losses seen in large offshore wind farm designs.

Beyond Strathclyde, Professor Infield is Editor-in-Chief of the IET’s Renewable Power Generation journal, was lead author of UKERC’s Road Map for Photovoltaics Research in the UK, and contributed renewable energy evidence to the UK Government’s 2006 DTI Energy Review and a UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology. He has served as an IPCC Lead Author on the climate change mitigation potential of wind energy, and is a member of the Royal Society’s Energy Committee. His published work has been cited more than 20,000 times.

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Key expertise

• Wind energy systems and renewable electricity integration
• Wind turbine wake modelling and LIDAR-based measurement
• National doctoral training leadership in wind and marine energy
• Renewable energy policy evidence and international climate assessment

Professor Infield’s decades of leadership in renewable energy research and doctoral training — both at Strathclyde and before it at Loughborough’s CREST — add international depth and continuity to WEC’s own track record.