DAFNI Newsletter, September 2026

Introduction

Welcome to the DAFNI September 2026 newsletter!

It was a pleasure to welcome so many of you to our annual conference on 10th September, this year held at Rhodes House, University of Oxford. The event celebrated a year of innovation, collaboration, and impact across the DAFNI
community. We extend our sincere thanks to all our speakers for bringing this year’s themes of climate and security resilience, government strategies and clean energy to life.

Our fantastic line-up included keynote speaker, Margaret Read of NISTA who gave an intriguing talk on improving infrastructure resilience and the importance of asset management. Fellow keynote, Professor Jim Hall of University of Oxford & Chair of DAFNI’s Strategy Board, discussed how DAFNI can help navigate the trilemma of affordability, security of supply, and environmental impacts, the evolution of DAFNI since its inception, and the unique possibilities for DAFNI’s future.

Our invited speakers gave fascinating insights into the latest on UrbanAIR, CReDO+, and ENSIGN, whilst the DAFNI team updated us on all the significant developments achieved by the technical team
over the last year. The DAFNI Fellows gave insightful lightning talks on their research and endeavours for the next year.

Finally, Professor Robin Preece, representing Supergen Energy Networks Hub led an interactive workshop on Clean Energy where delegates from across infrastructures, academia, government and
industry considered how we can work better together in the future.

We have been overwhelmed by the extremely kind reflections on the conference received so far. Please do take a moment to complete our feedback form if you have not yet done so.

Please save the date for our 2027 conference, which will be held on 9th September at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester. We would be delighted to welcome you again next year.

Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Programme Lead

Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Programme Lead