Robert Morgan is a Professor in the Sir Harry Ricardo Laboratories within the Advanced Engineering Centre. He joined the university in 2012 after 20 years in industry first at Ricardo, then Ceres Power and finally as Chief Technical Officer at Highview Power Storage. He secured over £25M of research income in industry and £5M since joining the university. 

He is a co-founder of the Impact Factory, an initiative that brings enterprise, academia and teaching together to address the messy problems arising from the sustainability crisis.  The Impact Factory applies techniques normally applied to social science and business issues to technological problems to ensure the right questions are asked and better outcomes achieved.

Professor Morgan is joint secretary to the Universities’ Internal Combustion Engines Group (UnICEG) and a member of the IMechE Powertrain Systems and Fuels Group.   He was director of the APC Thermal Efficiency spoke until 2017 and  Assistant Head of the Advanced Engineering Centre until 2019.  His research focuses on the following themes:

• High efficiency – low emissions combustion
• Waste heat recovery
• Large scale energy storage
• Energy systems
• Messy problems!

My research is in the broad area of sustainability focusing on clean, efficient propulsion for transport and large scale energy systems. My work in engines is currently focused on the recuperated split cycle engine, working industrial partners such as Ricardo and Fiat Powertrain. This research includes experimental activities on engines and test rigs and fundamental modelling of the processes in the engine using computation fluid dynamics. I also work in energy systems, such as liquid air energy storage and sustainable fuels. I welcome approaches from PhD applicants working in these and related areas.