ForWind Oldenburg has a job opening for a PhD Position / Research Assistant (f/m/d) Multi-Objective Wind Farm Control in the WESys research group at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
Wind farm control plays a central role in increasing the value of wind energy. To this end, wind farms must be able not only to maximize their power output, but also to provide system services that are currently provided primarily by conventional power plants. At the same time, structural loads must be limited or even actively reduced. Therefore, wind farm controllers must manage different objectives, which are also expected to change over the course of the wind farm’s lifetime.
Job Description
With your strong background in control engineering, you will be designing control algorithms for wind turbines and wind farms that can address various objectives, ranging from improving grid integration and power maximization to load reduction. You will collaborate with other group members working on wind farm control, high-fidelity simulations, inflow modeling, and estimation. Furthermore, you will participate in planning wind tunnel and field experiments to validate the developed control algorithms.
Depending on your preferences and previous experience, your tasks will be related to one of the following projects:
Project A:
- Load-Aware Wind Farm Control for Addressing Different Control Objectives
- Adaptation of the control algorithm to changing wind farm characteristics, operational goals, and load limits
- Integration of wind farm control into the control framework for optimizing the wind farm’s value over its lifetime
Project B:
- Wind Turbine and Wind Farm Control in Complex Terrain
- Uncertainty quantification of measurement signals and robust wind farm control
- Improved integration of wind turbine control with the wind farm controller
- Improved grid integration, including short-term and mid-term power boosts
In addition, you will support the group in its organizational and teaching activities.
Job offer
We offer you the opportunity to develop your scientific career in a young and lively academic environment. You will be working in the WindLab – one of the university’s most modern office and lab spaces – while you will also have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your pathway towards the PhD is actively supported by, e.g.,
- structured supervision of the Ph.D. program,
- multidisciplinary cooperation with other researchers at ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES in Oldenburg,
- direct collaboration with industry while maintaining the links with our national and international partners in academia, including a PhD network,
- optional secondment at an international research institute
- development of personal, scientific, and teaching skills through an individual training program and selected teaching tasks,
- opportunities to present scientific results at international conferences and through peer-reviewed publications to extend your specific network.
Further, the university fosters a family-friendly working environment and offers a family service center and on-campus children’s daycare.
The position is initially limited to three years, with the intention of extending it to up to four years to facilitate the completion of a Ph.D. Compensation is based on the collective bargaining agreement for the public sector in the German federal states, TV-L E13, for a 75% position.
Our standards
- The University of Oldenburg is committed to increasing the percentage of female employees in the field of science. Therefore, female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance with § 21, Section 3 of the NHG, female candidates with equal qualifications will be given preference.
- Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualification.
Further benefits
- Secure remuneration according to collective agreement
- 30 days of vacation
- Company pension scheme
- Further training opportunities
- Flexible working hours
- Health management
- Mobile working
- Compatibility of career and family
- Childcare assistance
- University Sports Center
Candidate profile
Requirements for employment include:
- a qualifying master’s degree from a university in control engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, physical sciences, wind energy, renewable energy, or an equivalent field,
- aptitude and willingness to pursue a Ph.D. involving both numerical and experimental aspects,
- in-depth knowledge of control engineering,
- extensive experience in programming with at least MATLAB or Python,
- high motivation and the ability to collaborate on applied research topics,
- Very good English skills.
Desired (but not mandatory) qualifications are:
- Experience with wind energy: wind turbine dynamics, wind turbine control, wake interaction, wind farm control,
- several months of experience abroad during school, college, or after graduation,
- and good German skills.
Further information on the research environment
Wind energy research at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg has gained international recognition by its integration into ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen and the national Wind Energy Research Alliance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES) and ForWind.
At ForWind, we foster and value collaboration between our research groups and partner institutions, such as the members of the European Academy of Wind Energy. In Oldenburg, our 50 researchers from the fields of physics, meteorology, and engineering are collaborating at the WindLab, which focuses on wind physics. Our mission is to develop a better understanding of the atmospheric and wind turbine flow physics necessary to meet the global demand for clean and affordable electricity.
Therefore, we conduct laboratory experiments, free-field measurements, and HPC-based numerical simulations. Our research facilities include three turbulent wind tunnels with fully controlled model wind turbines and wind farms of various sizes, a range of equipment for free-field measurements at onshore and offshore wind farms, and a high-performance computing cluster for atmospheric flow simulations. We have direct access to the DLR research wind farm WiValdi (https://windenergy-researchfarm.com), where, among other things, control experiments are conducted on two utility-scale wind turbines. Almost all of our projects combine analyses at more than one of these facilities.
Further information is available at www.forwind.de/en/ and https://uol.de/en/physics/research/we-sys.
For questions regarding this job opportunity, please contact Prof. Dr. Martin Kühn at +49(0)441/798-5061 or preferably by email at martin.kuehn@uni-oldenburg.de.
Contact
Please submit your application electronically as a single PDF file by August 11, 2026, to application.wesys@uni-oldenburg.de, and include reference #WEB128.
The PDF file must include the following in either English or German:
- A letter explaining why you are applying
- Curriculum vitae
- Grade transcripts, B.S. and M.S. diplomas
- Employment references
A second PDF file containing your thesis or relevant research papers is an optional attachment.
We are looking forward to receiving your application.
