Younjung Choi

Phd candidate | Architecture & mechanism of an energy mobility systems model

Institution: University of Twente
Work package: WP10 Integral models
In NEON: 2021 onwards

WP10 PhD candidate on the architecture and mechanism of the NEON energy-mobility systems model; co-organised the first NEON Q-celebration and led a cross-disciplinary energy-community game paper with three other NEON PhDs.

Younjung (Youn) Choi worked at the University of Twente's Systems Engineering & Multidisciplinary Design group on the architecture of energy-mobility system models and on how models can serve as communication tools between researchers, stakeholders and engineering teams.

About me

I like learning how people think and behave. This is the reason why I sometimes ask you lots of whys, hows, and whats. Secondly, I enjoy exploring unfamiliar countries and giving challenging tasks to myself during those trips, which brings me inspirations and nice thoughts, not always but often. For instance, I took the Trans-Siberian train when I came to the Netherlands from South Korea. It was boring at some points, but I saw why life is beautiful. Thirdly, afternoon drinks with ‘hapjes’ or cooking a nice dish is another source of my happiness. Lastly, my motto is “Be nice and be useful.”.

Personal Motivation

We have generated massive numbers of energy (mobility) systems models for the past decades, aiming at accelerating the energy transition. Nevertheless, the energy transition does not seem to realize as rapidly as we expected. Why does this happen? Are we missing something when developing models? How can we make energy systems models useful enough to advise policy-makers and citizens to make decisions to use a far less amount of fossil fuels? How can we design energy systems models to let interdisciplinary researchers and industries better understand what each other says and therefore learn what they can do better for accelerating the energy transition? I joined the NEON project to solve those questions. My key terms are decision-making in sustainability and circular economy, human behavior, and education.

Architecture & mechanism of an energy mobility systems model

I will research and develop an architecture of the integral model that will be developed by more than 30 Ph.D. candidates together in the NEON project. Hopefully, the architecture will let us know what sub-models we need, how to arrange the models, and most importantly, ’why’.

Link to other neon research

Communication with all of you is crucial for me. Having regular meetings with colleagues in the WP10 (integral model) will be great. To increase the interdisciplinary potential of the energy mobility systems model, I also look forward to working with WP 7 (The human factors), 8 (Governance), and 9 (Societal values).

Profile text from the former NEON website.

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Publications and talks

Perspectives on Modeling Energy and Mobility Transitions for Stakeholders: A Dutch Case (journal-article, 2023)
Applying design research for cross-disciplinary collaboration: Experiences from a gamification process (conference-paper, 2023)
An Approach for Exploring Non-technical Complexity in Engineering Design Processes (conference-paper, 2022)
Functions of Models Illustrating the Transitions of Energy and Mobility Systems (conference-paper, 2022)
The first NEON Q-celebration! (news, 2023-02-09)