ECR Working Group, UK Hypersonics Network, University of Oxford

The Network was also represented at the Race2Space Symposium on the 10th of July 2026, where the ECR programme engaged with student teams from across the UK and introduced opportunities to become involved in future Network activities. The symposium provided an excellent opportunity to strengthen relationships with the wider student aerospace community and demonstrate how activities such as Race2Space can naturally connect with research in hypersonic flight, diagnostics and experimental validation.

The ECR programme organised a dedicated student visit to the Oxford Thermofluids Institute on the 8th of July 2026

The visit brought together undergraduate students from Race2Space and doctoral researchers from the R2T2 programme for a day centred on experimental hypersonics and community building. Participants were introduced to the objectives of the UK Hypersonics Network before touring the HDT and T6 facilities, where they learned how ground-test facilities are used to investigate high-speed flow physics, develop advanced diagnostics and generate the experimental data required to validate numerical models and support future flight experimentation.

Alongside the facility visits, students participated in a technical challenge workshop based around a £5k collaborative project exercise. Working in multidisciplinary teams, participants were asked to identify a technical challenge relevant to one of the Network's Special Interest Groups and develop a realistic project that could be delivered over a three to six-month period with modest funding. The exercise encouraged students to think beyond their own research projects, consider collaborative approaches across institutions and disciplines, and explore how relatively small technical activities could contribute to the longer-term ambitions of the Network.

An important milestone at the Forum was the introduction of the first ECR Showcase during the UK Hypersonics Network Biannual Forum on the 6th of July 2026. The showcase provided undergraduate students, doctoral researchers, and postdoctoral researchers with the opportunity to present their work to the wider community through a series of short technical presentations. Beyond showcasing research, the session encouraged discussion around common technical challenges, promoted collaboration across institutions and highlighted the breadth of research already taking place within the UK community.

We would like to congratulate all the Early Career Researchers who presented at the event, and a special mention to Oliver Dow who received the Best ECR Presentation Award.

• Damon Miah (Swansea University) - Simulation/Optimisation of Hypersonic Propulsion Systems.

• Oliver Dow (Loughborough University) - Flight Dynamics and Control of a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle.

• Raahil Nayak (Sheffield Hallam University) - Transpiration Cooling Strategies in the Hypersonic Boundary Layer.

• Roshan Frost and Joshua Matthews (Imperial College London) - An undergraduate project designing a sovereign flight experiment and its impact on undergraduate involvement in hypersonics research.

• Thomas van Mierlo (Swansea University) - Accelerating the discrete velocity method of solving the Boltzmann BGK equation for rarefied gas flows.

• Dongdong Xu (University of Leicester) - Instability of streaky high-supersonic boundary layers over cooled walls.

The quality of the presentations demonstrated the breadth of emerging hypersonics research taking place across the UK and generated valuable discussion around common technical challenges, future collaborations and opportunities for student involvement in the wider Network.