UK CHN CORE - Key Persons
Dr Adam Hughes is a marine ecologist with over 20 years' experience working in marine resource management. For the last 8 years he has been working mainly on the development of sustainable mariculture. This has involved developing close links with small and large companies to diversify the industry and develop alternate high value products.
With global food security becoming more dependent on food farmed in the sea, producing that food in sustainably is becoming increasing important. I am a researcher and lecturer in sustainable aquaculture focusing on the development of economically and environmentally sustainable production systems for marine plants and animals. Much of my work focuses on the diversification of the aquaculture industry into novel species and products. Within my current post I am the coordinator of the 5.7 M FP7 project IDREEM (Increasing Industrial Efficiency in European Mariculture) in which 15 partners across Europe aim to develop and to assess the social, economic and environmental performance of IMTA (Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture). He is the Research Area Lead for Aquaculture at SAMS, chair the UHI Aquaculture Knowledge Exchange Hub, convenor of the MASTS sustainable aquaculture forum and an honorary research fellow at the University of the Seychelles.
Dr Alasdair McDonald is a senior lecturer at the EPSRC Wind and Marine Energy Systems Centre for Doctoral Training based in the Wind Energy and Control Centre, Institute for Energy and Environment, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde. His research interests are centred on electrical generators and their application to renewable energy, especially wind turbine powertrains.
He studied Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Durham in 2004 and completed a PhD at the Institute of Energy Systems at the School of Engineering & Electronics at the University of Edinburgh in 2008. Subsequently Alasdair worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Edinburgh on a number of projects on direct-drive generators for wind and marine energy. In 2009, he co-founded the spin-out company NGenTec to commercialise their research of a novel air-cored generator for wind. Dr McDonald was Chief Engineer at the company in 2010-2012, during which time the company designed, built and tested a 1MW demonstrator. Alasdair has worked as a consultant on the design of permanent magnet generators for direct-drive wind turbines.
His research interests include:
• Wind turbine powertrain design and modelling for low cost of energy
• Design of electrical generators, especially low speed, permanent magnet machines for renewables.
• Structural analysis and optimisation of direct drive generators
• Reliability engineering of wind turbines with a focus on offshore wind turbine powertrains
• Condition monitoring and remaining useful life predictions of wind turbine powertrains
• The use of parallel and modular powertrains to increase availability
At Strathclyde he is course director for the MSc in Wind Energy Systems and Training Manager for the EPSRC Wind and Marine Energy Systems Centre for Doctoral Training. He is PI of the UK-China MOD-CORE project.
My name is Anela Bajric-Hodzic and I am currently a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at the University of Oxford, in the Department of Engineering. I obtained my doctorate degree in Mechanical Engineering in December 2017 at the Technical University of Denmark on the topic of structural damping. During my MSc studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, my curiosity to understand the underlying mechanisms of the dynamics and vibrations encountered in structures exposed to severe dynamic excitations, was sparked. I have since worked on multiple projects regarding structural dynamics of small and large scale structures.
I am participating in Work Package 4.1, which focuses on holistic structural design of offshore wind turbine generators in extreme conditions in coastal regions of China. The characteristic soil conditions govern the design of monopile foundations, together with the extreme wave and wind loads that such structure will experience in this environment. The extreme loading from waves and wind will be accounted for in a coupled aeroelastic model integrating the state of the art foundation models to identify the design drivers in ultimate-, serviceability and fatigue limit state. Thereby the significance of the structural loading, structural dynamics and foundation design can be quantified for future scales of offshore wind turbines. This will ultimately result in an overview of design drivers associated with future scales of offshore wind turbine generators in coastal regions of China. In parallel, the design overview will enable an investigation of the necessary sensor layout for subsequent structural, wave and wind load identification in extreme conditions, through monitored data
Job Titles:
- Senior Lecturer
- Member of the IFAC Technical Committee
Dr Hong Yue is a Senior Lecturer at the Wind Energy and Control Centre, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde. Her research interests include dynamic systems modelling, complex system analysis, optimal experimental design, and advanced control of complex systems such as wind energy, power systems, process systems, biological and biochemical systems. In recent years, her research has focused more on wind energy and power systems, and has taken PI/Co-I roles in a number projects sponsored by UK funding bodies such as EPSRC, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scottish Funding Council, British Council, and also obtained support through joint UK-China projects such as RSE-NSFC, EPSRC Global Challenge Research Fund.
Dr Yue is a member of the IFAC Technical Committee on Chemical Process Control, and the IFAC Technical Committee on Biosystems and Bioprocesses. She has served as programme committee member for over 40 international conferences. She is an Associate Editor for the IFAC affiliated journal, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, an Associate Editor for IEEE Control Systems, also an Editorial Board Member for International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications. Dr. Yue has published over 160 peer reviewed papers at journals, conferences and book chapters.
Dr Luis Recalde-Camacho is a Research Associate at the Wind Energy and Control Centre, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde.
He joined the University in 2011 after receiving the PhD degree in control theory from the University of Strathclyde. His areas of expertise include dynamic systems modelling, complex system analysis and advanced control and estimation of complex systems such as wind energy systems and industrial process. His current research is focused on wind energy systems. Dr Recalde-Camacho has published several peer reviewed papers at journals and conferences.
Dr Maurizio Collu (PI) is Senior Lecturer of Dynamics of Offshore Structures, CEng. Recipient of the Calder prize by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (2011), of which he is a member (MRINA), and member of the Energy Institute. His research interests include the coupled dynamics of offshore floating wind turbines and the conceptual/preliminary design of floating support structures for the marine renewable industry. Member of the ITTC Offshore Engineering Committee (2014-17), now member of the ITTC Hydrodynamic Modelling of Marine Renewable Energy Devices Committee (2017-20), and of the RINA Maritime Innovation Committee (2017-now).
His research has focused on coupled dynamics of offshore renewable energy devices since 2009, with around 40 international peer-reviewed papers, and two book chapters on this topic. He led the support system conceptual design in the 2.8M GBP ETI project NOVA, and the development of a coupled model of dynamics as WP leader in H2Ocean (EU FP7, Grant no.288145), managing an international team of six people. PI on the renewable energy project EP/P510348/1, Maurizio is currently Co-I/WP leader on the 3.8M GBP grant EP/P009743/1, focussing on the development of dynamics model for offshore wind farms, and PI of the 0.8M GBP INNO-MP project (EP/R007497/1), a joint UK-China project focusing on the development of offshore renewable energy technologies, managing 19 investigators from 3 UK and 3 Chinese research institutions.
Paul is an early career researcher interested in the physics of ocean waves and tidal currents. He obtained a BE with first class honours in Civil Engineering from the National University of Ireland Galway in 2011, an MSc with distinction in Sustainable Energy Systems from the University of Edinburgh in 2012, and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2017.
Paul's doctoral studies were supervised by Prof. Alistair Borthwick, Dr Vengatesan Venugopal, and Prof. Thomas Adcock (University of Oxford), and focused on both the social and ecological impacts of marine energy and the optimal arrangement of turbines in tidal channels. Paul joined the Tidal Energy Research Group at the University of Oxford in late 2016, where he assisted Prof Thomas Adcock and Dr Wei-Koon Lee (Universiti Teknologi MARA) in making a robust assessment of the Malaysian tidal stream power resource.
Dr Simon Jude is Senior Lecturer in the Cranfield Institute for Resilient Futures, specialising in transdisciplinary approaches to improve environmental risk analysis and governance.
Projects totalling £8m as PI/Co-I include NERC RESPONSE (NE/J016330/1); VertIBase (NE/01765X/1); CASE PhD investigating cumulative effects (NE/L009668/1); EPSRC/ESRC International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIFEP/K012347/1). He co-authored the Guidelines for Marine Environmental Risk Assessment, futures scenarios and climate change risk assessments.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Steven BENJAMINS is a Postdoctoral Research Associate, focusing on interactions between marine renewable energy generators and marine vertebrates, and developing monitoring strategies appropriate for energetic conditions.
His interest also includes impacts of aquaculture. He's PI in the 120K GBP SARF0112-LEAP project assessing impacts of novel Acoustic Deterrent Devices in aquaculture on cetaceans.
I obtained my undergraduate degree in naval architecture and ocean engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2011. I then pursued my master degree of science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China. Particularly, I primarily worked on Hydrodynamics and VIM of a deep-draft semisubmersible concept designed for the South China Sea during the 2.5 years at SJTU. In August 2014, I moved to Trondheim, Norway due to a PhD position there. I stayed in the Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. My PhD project works on fluid dynamics: wave-shear current interaction. I obtained my PhD degree in 2017 and then continued this topic in the same group for one more year as a postdoctoral researcher. I moved to Oxford at the end of August 2018, and am currently staying in the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, as a postdoctoral research assistant in wave modeling. My current project deals with surface waves propagating over varying bathymetry, focusing on the formation mechanism of rogue/freak/giant waves in a non-equilibrium state.
My research interests are in general broad. I am interested in (not limited to) water waves, wave-structure interaction, wave-current interaction, ocean wave models, and loads on offshore structures.
Alistair Borthwick has 40 years' engineering in civil engineering, and was a member of the design team of the Hutton Tension Leg Platform (the world's first vertically moored, floating oil platform for deep water applications) which won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1984. He is Professor of Applied Hydrodynamics at The University of Edinburgh, an Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and holds honorary professorships at Peking University, NUI Galway, Wuhan University, China University of Geosciences, University College Cork, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He was previously Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where he worked for 21 years from 1990-2011. He was Head of Civil & Environmental Engineering at University College Cork from 2011-13, where he was the Founding Director of the SFI Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy Ireland. Prof. Borthwick's research interests include environmental fluid mechanics, coastal and offshore processes, and marine renewable energy. Prof. Borthwick was awarded the title of Dr honoris causa by Budapest Műegyetem for contributions to Civil Engineering in 2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Prof. Athanasios Kolios is Professor in Risk and Asset Management Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering Department at the University of Strathclyde. Previously Reader in Risk Management and Reliability, focusing on risk-based design and analysis and operational management of offshore/marine structures at the Cranfield University.
He was PI of the EPSRC/Newton Fund grant EP/M020339/1 with HEU and NOTC (structural monitoring and reliability assessment of ORE technologies). He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed papers.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Head of Engineering
Prof. Lars Johanning, Deputy Head of Engineering Discipline, Chair of Ocean Technology at the University of Exeter, received PhD from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine at 2003.
He has worked in University of Exeter College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences since 2007. Now, he is the head of Offshore Renewable Energy.
He is a leading researcher with international recognition in the field of ocean energy and technology with a focus towards hydrodynamics and mooring systems.
During his career Prof. Johanning has led multiple challenging research projects to a successful outcome and has developed the ORE group at Exeter to its current strength. His research outputs include over 130 peer reviewed book chapters, journal and conference papers dedicated to Offshore Renewable Energy and related topics including multi-disciplinary publications on resource characterisation and environmental studies.
Professor Johanning is currently a Visiting Scholar at Dalian University of Technology, a selected Senator at the University of Exeter, Supergen (UKCMER) wave energy lead, and is the programme Director on the Marine-i Hub project, a £6.8m European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project as part of the Marine Hub Cornwall Enterprise Zone to stimulate and support business-led and market-driven R&D and innovation.
He is a leading researcher with international recognition in the field of ocean energy and technology with a focus towards hydrodynamics and mooring systems.
Li Ran obtained a PhD degree (1989) in Power Systems Engineering from Chongqing University in China for his work on reliability evaluation of the transmission networks planned for the Three-Gorges Hydro Power Plant. He then participated in the commissioning of Gezhouba-Shanghai HVDC System (1989-1990). Between 1992 and 1999, he was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Universities of Aberdeen, Nottingham and Heriot-Watt, working on marine electrical propulsion, offshore electrical systems and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in power electronic motor drives. He became a Lecturer with the University of Northumbria at Newcastle in 1999 and moved to Durham University in 2003 where he was promoted to a Chair in 2010. He was seconded to Alstom Power Conversion at Kidsgrove (2001-2004) and worked at MIT on sabbatical (2007-2008). Li has a joint appointment with the Chongqing University and Warwick University. At Chongqing he acts as the Deputy Director for the State Key Laboratory in Power Transmission Equipment and System Security of China and at University of Warwick he is the Professor in Power Electronics - Systems. His research interests are in the applications of power electronics in renewable energy systems, electrical power grids and machine drives.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Computational Geoscience and Engineering at Imperial College London
Prof. Matthew Piggott is Professor of Computational Geoscience and Engineering at Imperial College London. He is a member of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering where he Heads the Computational Geoscience and Engineering Research Section. He obtained Masters and PhD degrees in Mathematics from the University of Bath, specialising in Numerical Analysis and joined Imperial College London in 2001. He is Deputy Director for the NERC Doctoral Training Partnership "Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet". His research interests include the development of advanced open source numerical methods for environmental flows utilising adaptive mesh methods and massively parallel algorithms, along with inversion, optimisation and uncertainty quantification techniques, and their application across a range of environmental and energy motivated problems.
He has authored 100+ peer reviewed publications in these areas, raised over £10M of UK Research Council and industrial funding, and supervised 35 PhD students and 20 postdoctoral researchers. Current NERC funding includes a Consortium project NE/K000047/1: "Will climate change in the Arctic increase the landslide-tsunami risk to the UK?" where Prof. Piggott leads a work package on hydrodynamic modelling and quantitative hazard assessment, and NE/S006427/1 on the simulation of the ocean dynamics under ice shelves. Numerical technology development is funded by a series of EPSRC projects, including the Platform EP/L000407/1: "Underpinning technologies for finite element simulation", recently renewed under EP/R029423/1 "PRISM: Platform for Research In Simulation Methods", and a Software for the Future project EP/M011054/1: "A new simulation and optimisation platform for marine technology". He works on or coordinates the development of several computational codes of relevance to this project, including: Fluidity [CFD and marine modelling with finite elements and adaptive unstructured meshes - http://fluidity-project.org]; OpenTidalFarm [simulation and adjoint-based optimisation of tidal turbine arrays - http://opentidalfarm.org]; and Thetis [3D coastal ocean model built using the Firedrake framework - http://thetisproject.org].
Mike Graham is Professor of Unsteady Aerodynamics in the Aeronautics Department of Imperial College. He is currently the PI for the Imperial College-Warwick University project FENGBO-Wind which is part of the UK-China Offshore Rewable Energy Consortium programme.
Mike Graham has been on the staff at Imperial College since 1970, joining as a lecturer after taking a Maths BA degree (1963) at Cambridge University and a PhD in Aeronautics (1967) at Imperial College, becoming Head of the Department of Aeronautics from 1999 - 2003. During his career at the College he has worked in the research fields of Low-Speed Aerodynamics (turbulence, wakes, wind engineering), Marine Technology (wave and current forces on fixed structures and floating bodies) and since 1990 Renewable Energy (wind turbine aerodynamics and tidal turbine hydrodynamics).
This research has been both experimental and theoretical/computational and has been published in more than 150 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He has participated in many EPSRC, EU and other funded projects including leading a number of consortium projects, relevant examples being EPSRC Marine CFD, EU MARNET(technical area coordinator) and EU(Joule): ROTOW(rotor-tower interaction) and has been a member of UK Govt. DTI committees on renewable energy and accelerated hydrocarbon recovery, the EPSRC Oil and Gas Extraction Programme and the High Performance Computing Panel CCP12. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.
Rafael Palacios is Reader in Aeronautics at Imperial College London, where he has been since 2007. He is Aeronautical Engineer from Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, which he attended with a Fulbright fellowship. Before his PhD he spent four years at Airbus's Aeroelasticity Department near Madrid. His research is on computational methods in aeroservoelasticity and fluid-structure interactions, with applications to aeroelastic design and control of large offshore wind turbines and very flexible air vehicles. His research has been funded by the UK Research Council, European Commission, AFOSR, QinetiQ and Airbus.
He has also acted as technical consultant with Airbus, Facebook and MSC Software in the translation of his research in nonlinear aeroelasticity to industrial applications. At Imperial he is theme leader for Offshore Renewable Energy research at the Energy Futures Lab. He received the best undergraduate student award in Spain, the AIAA Foundation Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Award for best PhD thesis in aerospace engineering in the US, and Imperial's best supervisor award in 2013. Rafael is associate editor of Progress in Aerospace Sciences, the Journal of Fluids and Structures, and the Journal of Aircraft, a member of the AIAA Structural Dynamics Technical Committee, and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. For more information as well as a full list of publications, please visit Rafael's personal web site at Imperial College London or the website of the Load Control and Aeroelastics Research Lab.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at the University of Oxford
Tom Adcock is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and Official Fellow at St Peter's College. He completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Oxford. After a short spell in industry he returned to Oxford as a post doc before taking up his current role in 2012. His work looks at how engineers understand the marine environment.
His research looks at the ocean environment - at how we can use it to our advantage and how we can design against it. Particular interests are rogue waves, tidal energy, tsunamis and storm surges. My work on tidal power has featured in various national newspapers and has been discussed in the Scottish parliament. In 2015 I was interviewed about rogue waves on The Today Programme.
Ton van den Bremer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, and Tutor and Fellow in Engineering in Worcester College.
His research interests are in geophysical fluid mechanics, understanding the role of non-linearity in oceanic and atmospheric gravity waves. For his Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship, Ton is examining the role of waves in the transport and spreading of plastic pollution in the ocean. He also has an interest in stochastic processes, applied to the economics of natural resources and climate.
As part of the project, Ton van den Bremer will examine the evolution of waves from deep water onto the top of slopes, where increases in the probability of extreme waves have been observed and offshore wind turbines are planned.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Control Engineering at the University of Warwick
Professor Xiaowei Zhao is Professor of Control Engineering at the University of Warwick. He is an EPSRC Fellow and a co-director of the EPSRC Supergen ORE (Offshore Renewable Energy) Hub. He obtained his PhD in Control Theory from Imperial College London in 2010 and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Control Engineering Group of the University of Oxford until 2013. After that he joined the University of Warwick where he was awarded a chair in 2018. At Warwick he has established the Intelligent Control & Smart Energy (ICSE) research group which currently includes around 20 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. His main research areas are control theory and machine learning with applications to the modelling and control of offshore renewable energy systems and their grid integration, local smart energy systems, and autonomous systems. He currently has six main research projects (four from EPSRC and two from H2020) in these areas with a total project values of £20 million.
Dr Ye Li received his PhD from Mechanical Engineering Department at UBC in 2007. He is now a professor at School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), the founding director of SJTU Multiple functional towing tank, the founding director of NDRC National Center for Offshore Wind Technology, Associate Fellow of AIAA and senior member of IEEE. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in offshore technology and for his extensive works in theoretical, numerical and experimental studies on fluid-structure interaction. He is an associate editor of ASME Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Energy Review, AIP Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy and many others. Prior to joining SJTU, he was the ocean modeling effort leader and a senior scientist at U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). In the past several years, he leaded or participated in many industrial projects in the field of offshore renewable energy, such as Goldwind 3MW and 6MW offshore wind turbine project, CPT 100kW wave energy project, OPT 150kW wave energy project, Principle Power 3MW offshore wind project, and Verdant Power 300kW tidal current energy project.
Prof. Song is a world-renowned scholar in electrical engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the China Electric Power Research Institute. Due to his outstanding knowledge in his field and contributions to power system research, he was awarded D.Sc. by Brunel University in 2002 and an Honorary D.Eng. by Bath University in 2014.
He has been rector of the University of Macau since January 2018.
From 1997 to 2010, he was a Professor of Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University, UK. He held the Royal Academy of Engineering/Nuclear Electric/Siemens Chair of Power Systems at Brunel from Jan 1997 to Dec 2001. In 2004, he was appointed the pro-vice-chancellor for graduate studies at Brunel.
In 2009, he was an assistant president and professor of electrical engineering at Tsinghua University. He was also appointed as the Director of Chinese National Recruitment Program of Global Experts (1000 Talents Program) Office until December 2012. In November 2012, he joined Zhejiang University as executive vice president and the founding dean of the International Campus.
From 1991 to 1992, Song was the Royal Society Visiting Fellow at the School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, UK and from 1992 to 1993, he was the research officer at School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and lecturer from 1993 to 1994 at the University of Bath, UK.