Congratulations to Hellen Elimo Msemo and Michael Baidu who have been awarded SWIFT PhD studentships to commence in October 2018. Hellen currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam and as Manager of Network Operations with the Tanzania Meteorological Agency. Her SWIFT research will look at ‘Bridging the gap between numerical forecast evaluation and value to decision makers in climate sensitive sectors’; Hellen will connect chiefly with SWIFT Work Packages R7, CP Ensembles; R1, Users, and R2 evaluation. Michael Baidu joins the SWIFT team from the Research and Applied Meteorology Department, Ghana Meteorological Agency, Legon – Accra Ghana. His studentship is on, ‘The Understanding and Prediction of High Impact Weather over West Africa’. His research will connect chiefly with SWIFT Work Package R5, Synoptic Methods. Both will join the full-time PhD programme at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, UK.