Institute Director
Prof. Carsten Agert is Head of the Institute of Networked Energy Systems in Oldenburg and Stuttgart, which he set up in 2008 in Oldenburg under the name of the EWE Research Centre NEXT ENERGY.
He studied physics at Philipps-Universität Marburg and the University of Kent in Canterbury in the UK. He then completed his doctorate based on research undertaken at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Freiburg and the University of Oxford. In 2001, he spent time conducting research in the South African city of Pretoria, before going on to work as a research associateto the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). Between 2005 and 2008, he led a group researching fuel cell systems at Fraunhofer ISE. He was appointed Professor of Energy Technology at the University of Oldenburg in 2008. At the same time, he also assumed responsibility for setting up the EWE Research Centre NEXT ENERGY, which became part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in 2017 as the Institute of Networked Energy Systems.
Carsten Agert has held positions including that of Vice-President of the European Renewable Energy Research Centres Agency EUREC, a member of the Advisory Board for Lower Saxony’s state-wide fuel-cell initiative, a member of the Lower Saxony government’s roundtable for the energy transition, and Spokesperson of the Board of Directors of the Energy Research Centre of Lower Saxony. Agert is currently a member of the Energy Strategy Council of the Weser Ems Innovation Region and represents DLR, among other things, in the World Bank's Energy Storage Partnership and as co-spokesperson for the "Infrastructures and System Integration" cluster in the Hydrogen Research Network funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.