Meet Maria Tareen – a postdoc focusing on the energy solutions of the future

A short intro: Who are you and what's your professional background? 
I am Maria Tareen, a researcher in the EngTech section. I trained as a chemist (PhD, University of Warwick; MSc, University of Leeds) before moving into renewable energy engineering thirteen years ago. Most recently, I was an assistant professor and course director for the MSc in Renewable Energy Engineering & Thermofluids at Coventry University, where I held teaching and academic management roles, building engineering programmes (BEng, MSc), developing industry-focused curricula with industry, leading on quality and accreditation, and securing Royal Academy of Engineering and British Council funding for partnerships in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Brazil, India, Jordan and Iraq. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and hold a PgCert in Higher Education.

What is your area of work?
I started with renewable energy engineering projects (solar, wind, biofuels) and engineering education, later moving into hydrogen, energy storage, and energy management systems. My work applies IoT submetering at the process level, turning that measurement into decisions about how a production site should decarbonise. Waste heat recovery, electrification and hydrogen are not interchangeable, and hydrogen cuts both ways here. It is the only realistic route for processes that resist electrification, while electrolysis is itself a heat problem, since stacks reject low-grade heat that district heating can absorb. Storage sits in the same picture. It is what lets a site match intermittent supply to process demand, and what makes an energy management system worth having rather than just a dashboard. The factory boundary, where process heat, the grid and the heating network meet, is where I want to do my next work.

Why did you choose to work at the Department of Business Development and Technology?
BTECH treats industry as the point rather than the afterthought; that was the first draw. The second was the range of energy expertise in Herning, across both EngTech and the Centre for Energy Technologies. Together, they make an excellent platform for grounding my research in real production settings.

Would you like to share a bit about yourself, your family and your hobbies?
I moved to Denmark from the UK with my husband, José, who is also an academic, and our five-year-old son, Jerónimo. I am very sociable and always happy to get to know people over a cuppa. Danish culture and British culture aren't quite the same thing, so I may well put a foot wrong now and then – please just tell me. Outside work, I paint, read and cook; I am at my happiest when I am feeding people.