Helping Shape the Future of Mobility
Yvonne Ascott is Centre Manager within the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (AAPS) at the University of Bath – a Centre dedicated to training the next generation of industrial, research, and policy leaders in Automotive Propulsion.
Launched in 2019, the Centre provides a stimulating and supportive PhD training programme that supports postgraduate students to pioneer and shape the transition to clean, sustainable, and affordable mobility including supporting the development of ultra-low and zero-emission vehicles.
What the team here is doing is so important. We are all contributing in our own individual ways to finding solutions to the single biggest threat facing humanity – climate change.
Responsible for delivering the strategic vision of AAPS, Yvonne oversees the Centre’s resources and administrative team with overall responsibility for strategic planning, marketing, communications, industry engagement, financial management, and governance.
One of Yvonne’s main responsibilities is to attract the best and brightest minds from diverse disciplines to join AAPS, a four-year transdisciplinary research programme that includes a one-year MRes training programme, followed by a three to four-year PhD.
We need to empower the population to embrace a zero-emission future. It’s incredibly rewarding to see our students define the future of clean mobility through their research.
This is a grand challenge – engineers aren’t going to solve this problem alone. We also recruit chemists, psychologists, environmental scientists, and mathematicians to our programme, among others. By working together, this remarkable group of passionate researchers has the opportunity to challenge, explore and change the automotive industry, while opening up the possibilities that will usher in a true transformation of mobility.