PhD student Saumya Ranjan awarded a UC3M grant to promote gender equality in the predoctoral community

The Department of Aerospace Engineering has successfully secured one of the ten grants awarded by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) to promote gender equality in the predoctoral community. The grant has been awarded to PhD student Saumya Ranjan.

This grant, worth €26,500 per year, is intended to support female PhD candidates completing their doctoral studies under the International Doctorate distinction requirements.

By doing so, this funding aims to help overcome the additional barriers that women in engineering continue to face throughout their careers.

The call was highly competitive, attracting around eighty applications, with only ten grants awarded, further highlighting the significance of Saumya’s achievement.

About her research

Saumya Ranjan’s thesis focuses on atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) systems for sustainable missions in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). Her research aims to develop an innovative multidimensional simulation framework that couples atmospheric intake flow with plasma thruster discharge, with the goal of improving ABEP efficiency and supporting the future deployment of these technologies on VLEO satellites.

The Department extends its warmest congratulations to Saumya and her supervisors, Dr. Jiewei Zhou and Dr. Ahilan Appar, on this outstanding achievement.