EXTENDING THE RAIL NETWORK OF PHDS IN EUROPE’S RAIL JOINT UNDERTAKING

Project Information

PhDs EU-Rail

Grant agreement ID: 101175856

DOI

10.3030/101175856

EC signature date 9 October 2024

Start date 1 October 2024

End date 30 September 2027

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 1 691 125,00

Coordinated by

EURNEX e. V.
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PhDs EU-Rail (EXTENDING THE RAIL NETWORK OF PHDS IN EUROPE’S RAIL JOINT UNDERTAKING)

Reporting period: 2024-10-01 to 2026-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The European railway sector is undergoing a profound transformation driven by the twin imperatives of decarbonisation and digitalisation, as enshrined in the European Green Deal, the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, and the EU Rail Action Plan. Achieving the ambitious modal shift targets set by the European Commission requires not only technological innovation but also a new generation of highly qualified researchers capable of generating the scientific knowledge that underpins that transition. Yet Europe faces a structural deficit in railway research capacity: the sector suffers from an ageing workforce, fragmented national research traditions, insufficient cross-border academic collaboration, and a persistent shortage of PhD-level expertise in railway-specific disciplines.PhDs EU-Rail was conceived to address this gap directly. Co-funded by Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking under the Horizon Europe framework, the project brings together fifteen beneficiary institutions across twelve European countries to support ten doctoral research actions covering the full breadth of challenges facing the sector: decarbonisation of traction and freight, gender equality, next-generation education and training, rail-enabled urban logistics, night train operations, bridge-train dynamic compatibility, safety-critical human factors, socio-economic impact assessment, accessibility and inclusion, and the digitalisation of signalling and train control systems.The project's pathway to impact operates on two complementary levels. At the individual level, each PhD action produces original scientific knowledge, peer-reviewed publications, and trained researchers who will carry railway expertise into academia, industry and policy institutions. At the systemic level, PhDs EU-Rail contributes to the consolidation of a durable European railway research community, structured under EURNEX's institutional umbrella and connected to ERRAC, Europe's Rail, and the broader Horizon Europe ecosystem. The integration of social sciences and humanities is central to this vision: PhD actions on gender equality, inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities, human factors in digital command systems, and socio-economic assessment all embed SSH perspectives as core analytical frameworks, ensuring that the project's outputs address societal as well as technical dimensions of railway transformation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project has reached its mid-term point having successfully completed Reporting Period 1, covering the first eighteen months of activity across WP1 (Research Planning) and WP2 (Data Collection and Analysis). All tasks in both work packages were completed at 100% and all four planned milestones were achieved on schedule.
In WP1, the ten PhD candidates were appointed and onboarded. A common European PhD Research Planning Tutorial of 82 pages was co-developed with all partners and published openly on Zenodo. Individual research plans were defined for all ten actions, and a dedicated ethics review was completed for PhD9 on accessibility for people with intellectual disabilities.
In WP2, all ten data collection and analysis phases were completed, producing ten dedicated deliverables. Scientific highlights include: application of AHP/TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making to rank railway decarbonisation scenarios (PhD1); collection of 1,392 survey responses from women workers and users across the European rail sector (PhD2); development of an AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation tool for semantic evaluation of rail higher-education curricula (PhD3); a simulation-based feasibility study of rail-enabled urban logistics using real data from Czech Post (PhD4); a comparative analysis of European night train operations and market potential (PhD5); assembly of a TTBI-ready dataset for normative reassessment of EN 1990-Annex A2 bridge criteria (PhD6); a mixed-methods research design for digital command evaluation combining driver interviews with simulation experiments (PhD7); a pre-validated elasticity-based socio-economic assessment framework for Europe's Rail (PhD8); qualitative fieldwork with SNCF on rail accessibility for users with intellectual disabilities (PhD9); and the design and testing of a hybrid-virtualised microservices architecture for next-generation ERTMS using real RFI operational data (PhD10).
Milestone 4, requiring at least one peer-reviewed publication per PhD action, was achieved in full, with more than twenty scientific outputs published, accepted or submitted across the ten research lines by the end of Reporting Period 1.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

PhDs EU-Rail is generating results that advance the state of the art across multiple railway research domains simultaneously, which is itself a distinctive feature of the project.
In decarbonisation, the integrated LCA-MCDM approach in PhD1 provides a more comprehensive ranking of alternative traction technologies than existing studies, explicitly addressing the constraints of a network operating under crisis conditions. In rail education, PhD3 introduces the first AI-assisted, RAG-based tool for semantic curriculum evaluation in the railway domain, enabling scalable benchmarking of higher-education programmes against industry competency needs. In structural engineering, PhD6 undertakes the first systematic reassessment of the historical ERRI evidence underlying the lateral vibration and deck deflection criteria of EN 1990-Annex A2, directly challenging criteria that have remained largely unchanged since original codification. In the ERTMS domain, PhD10 goes beyond the existing OPTIMA demonstrator by introducing virtualisation and machine learning for real-time energy estimation and anomaly detection in train positioning.
To ensure uptake of these results, several conditions need to be addressed. Normative bodies such as ERA and CEN will need to engage with the technical evidence on bridge criteria and ERTMS architecture to translate findings into regulatory recommendations. The curriculum evaluation tool requires validation with a broader range of institutions before sector-wide adoption. Urban logistics concepts need demonstration beyond the initial corridor to establish replicability. Results on gender equality and accessibility require active uptake by rail operators and infrastructure managers. EURNEX is well positioned to facilitate these pathways through its network of member universities and its links to ERRAC and Europe's Rail.