Staff - EPSRC PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP

Head of the Electrical Machines and Drives Group, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow IEEE, Fellow IET, currently holds the Royal Academy of Engineering /Siemens Wind Power Research Chair at Sheffield. He has extensive research experience in electrical machines and controls, as well as acoustic noise and vibration, for applications ranging from wind power generation through domestic appliances to electric vehicles. He also has extensive experience of managing research groups and collaborative research projects. He is the Founding Academic Director of Sheffield Siemens Wind Power Research Centre (S²WP), the Founding Director of Midea Electrical Machines and Controls Research Centres at Shanghai and Sheffield on domestic appliances, also the Founding Director of Sheffield CRRC Electric Drives Technology Research Centre for fast train propulsion.

Dr Arwyn Thomas

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy

Industrial Principal Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP1, Development of Novel Modular Generators and Converters.

Dr Thomas is Head of Generator Technology Development, leading the development of direct drive permanent magnet wind power generators for Siemens Wind Power (SWP) headquartered at Brande, Denmark, and the S2WP centre at Sheffield. His team is the global design authority for permanent magnet generators, which is a key differentiating technology for Siemens, and works closely with the EMD group at UoS on a number of Siemens and Siemens/Government funded research projects. He obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2009 he has risen through the ranks from Engineer to Head of Electromagnetic Design (S2WP) in 2011 and also Head of Electrical Design (SWP) in 2013 to his current position. He has led a number of major Siemens and EU/UK funded projects (e.g. Regional Growth Fund, Project 5: “Full Scale PM Wind Power Generator Technologies with High Reliability, Efficiency and Power Density”) in addition to leading commercial product development in SWP. In particular, under his leadership, they developed the latest 7MW generators, a great commercial success, including “Hornsea One” off-shore wind farm – the largest in the world.

Professor David Stone

University of Sheffield, Electrical Machines and Drives Group

Academic Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP1, Development of Novel Modular Generators and Converters.

Fellow IET, Prof. Stone is Head of the Centre for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA) in the EMD group, Sheffield. CREESA covers electrochemical energy storage from 1mW to 2MW including the ability to manufacture prototype lithium cells and owns a 2MW, 1MWhr 11kV grid connected energy storage test facility. Prof. Stone is extremely active in power electronics for energy conversion, and founded a university spin-out company Red Deer Technology Group (RDTG)

Professor Keith Worden

University of Sheffield, Dynamics Research Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Fellow of IMechE, IoP and IMA, Prof. Worden has been Head of the Dynamics Research Group at Sheffield since 2000. He has over 30 years of research experience, was a pioneer of data-based Structural Health Monitoring and co-wrote the first monograph on the subject. He was an EPSRC Advanced Fellow (1998-2002) and is currently an EPSRC Established Career Fellow (2013-2018). He was the recipient of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award of SHM – an International Journal.

Professor David Wagg

University of Sheffield, Dynamics Research Group

Academic Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP2, Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades.

Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at the University of Sheffield. His research is focused on understanding and controlling nonlinear structural dynamics. He is PI for the EPSRC programme grant “Engineering Nonlinearity”, a £4.2m consortium of 5 Universities and 9 Industrial partners, focused on improving the performance of systems operating in dynamic environments. From 2004-2009 he was as EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow.

Professor Nikolaos Dervilis

University of Sheffield, Dynamics Research Group

Academic Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP2, Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades.

Professor Dervilis is a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield and a member of the Dynamics Research Group. He studied physics in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Later, he obtained his MSc in Sustainable and Renewable Energy Systems from the University of Edinburgh in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield, Mechanical Engineering Department in the field of machine learning for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of wind turbines. His expertise focuses on SHM, pattern recognition, data analysis and nonlinear dynamics. He is especially engaged with offshore wind farms and he is the PI on another partnership with Siemens Gamesa.

Professor Martin Foster

University of Sheffield, Electrical Machines and Drives Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Prof. Foster is an academic chair in the Electrical Machines and Drives group at the University of Sheffield. He has an interest in design and optimisation of power electronics converters and energy storage. He is involved with a number of EPSRC, TSB and directly industrially funded projects. Prof. Foster works closely with industry, (e.g. TDK-Lambda, Philips research laboratories and Bang and Olufsen, both on resonant power conversion) and in 2015 completed a RAEng sponsored industrial secondment with VxI Power on battery charger technologies.

Dr Antonio Griffo

University of Sheffield, Electrical Machines and Drives Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Griffo is a Lecturer in the Electrical Machines and Drives group at the University of Sheffield. He has held postdoctoral research positions at the Universities of Bristol and Sheffield. His research is focused on modelling, design and control of electrical machines and power electronics converters with a particular emphasis on real-time condition monitoring, fault detection, diagnostic and prognostic. He is PI on the EPSRC grant on “Condition monitoring and lifetime prognosis of electrical machines”, and Co-I in other European and industrially sponsored projects.

Professor Guang-Jin Li

University of Sheffield, Electrical Machines and Drives Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Prof. Li obtained his PhD degree from the Ecole Supérieure de Cachan (ENS), France, in 2011. He is a Professor in the Electrical Machines and Drives group at the University of Sheffield in 2012 and his research is focused on electrical machine design and drives, thermal management, fault modelling and diagnosis. Prof Li is also a committee member of the UK Magnetics Society.

Dr Milijana Odavic

University of Sheffield, Electrical Machines and Drives Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Odavic is a Lecturer in Power Electronics Systems in the Electrical Machines and Drives group at the University of Sheffield. She has an MSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. After completing her PhD in power electronics she stayed with the Power Electronics and Machine Control group at the University of Nottingham as a Research Fellow working on power electronics related research projects in close collaboration with UK and international industries. Her current research is in the area of power electronics interfaced renewable power resources and aims to develop effective solutions for their integration to the network, through the accurate quantification of instability risks, the development of active approaches to ensure the stability and improve the overall performance of micro grid power systems.

Professor Elizabeth Cross

University of Sheffield, Dynamics Research Group

Academic Co-Investigator.

Professor Cross is a member of staff in The Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Sheffield. With a first class degree in mathematics she moved into engineering for her Master’s degree and PhD. Her current areas of interest are focused on the development of robust indicators for structural performance and condition. Her funded research includes an Innovate UK award for health monitoring of landing gears, of which she is PI, and a number of industry led projects, including a project with Ricardo that focused on the use of acoustic emission for the detection of faults in wind turbine bearings.

Dr Rob Barthorpe

University of Sheffield, Dynamics Research Group

Academic Supervisor.

Dr Barthorpe is a lecturer in the Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. His research covers the areas of structural health monitoring, uncertainty analysis and verification and validation of numerical models, with a particular focus on how numerical models may be used to circumvent the lack of data problem in structural health monitoring applications. A large part of this work is in developing new approaches for integrating experimental measurements and numerical model predictions such that uncertainty in both the may be accounted for.

Professor Simon Hogg

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP3, Novel Condition Monitoring and Fault Detection Techniques and Technologies.

Prof. Hogg holds the Ørsted Chair in Renewable Energy at DU and is the Executive Director of the Durham Energy Institute. He is a member of the Executive Management Team of the EPSRC Supergen Wind Hub (Cranfield, Durham, Loughborough, Manchester, STFC & Strathclyde Universities) with technical leadership of the condition monitoring/asset management aspects of the Consortium’s work. Prof. Hogg is also Principal Investigator of the EPSRC Future Conventional Power Research Consortium (Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and Sheffield Universities) and is a co-Investigator on the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration.

Professor Charles Augarde

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.

Prof. Augarde is Chair in Engineering at Durham University School of Engineering & Computing Sciences, and has over 15 years’ research experience in computational geotechnics and unsaturated soils on aspects of computational modelling. He is on the editorial board of Computers & Geotechnics and Géotechnique Letters, a former member of the Géotechnique GAP and is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. He is also the PI on “Seabed Ploughing” with DU, and is CI on the current iSMART project. He is also the current President of the UK Association for Computational Mechanics.

Dr Toby Breckon

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Breckon is a Reader within the School of Engineering and Computer Sciences at Durham University. His key research interests lie in the domain of computer vision and image processing. He holds a PhD in informatics (computer vision) from the University of Edinburgh. He is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. In addition, he is an Accredited Senior Imaging Scientist and Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He led the development of image-based automatic threat detection for the 2008 UK MoD Grand Challenge winners [R.J. Mitchell Trophy, (2008), IET Innovation Award (2009)]. His work is recognised as recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Selwyn Award for early-career contribution to imaging science (2011).

Professor William Coombs

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Coombs is a Senior Lecturer at DU with expertise in developing non-linear finite-element and meshless analysis algorithms. Included within this is the formulation and implementation of various material models for geotechnical materials (sands and clays). Dr Coombs is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and in 2014 he gained an EPSRC Bright Ideas award on “Resilient rail infrastructure”. He is also CI on two EPSRC projects: “Seabed ploughing: modelling for infrastructure installation” and is the DU lead on “Screw piles for wind energy foundation systems”

Professor Christopher Crabtree

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Crabtree is a lecturer in wind energy systems at Durham University specialising in condition monitoring, reliability and performance assessment for wind energy. His research has been supported by industrial partners including Ørsted Energy, DNV GL and E.ON. He has been involved in the EPSRC SUPERGEN Wind Consortium since 2007, and is a CI of the EPSRC SUPERGEN Wind Hub. He is CI of the £3M EPSRC HOME Offshore project.

Dr Peter Matthews

Durham University

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Matthews is a lecturer in Design Informatics at the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at Durham University. His focus is on data mining operational data from wind turbine SCADA systems. He is actively collaborating with wind energy operators Ørsted (DK) and Maia Eolis (FR). He was a CI on the Customer Led Network Revolution (CLNR) project, a £53M industry led project on reviewing the current state of the UK’s electricity distribution network and what impact new technologies (e.g. smart meters, electric cars) would have on this network. Dr Matthews led the CLNR data analysis team to look at 14000 smart meter customers, with readings taken every 30 minutes over a period of 2 years.

Professor James Gilbert

University of Hull

Academic Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP4, Investigation of Novel Blade and Foundation Technology.

Prof. Gilbert has over 25-year extensive experience of novel sensing systems research and the development of innovative manufacturing processes. He has direct involvement in a number of research grants mostly carried out in collaboration with industry, and has extensive experience of managing interdisciplinary research projects. Since August 2016 he has been the Research, Development and Innovation lead for Project Aura, identifying and developing collaborative research projects with Siemens, Ørsted, University of Sheffield, Durham University and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.

Professor Michael Fagan

University of Hull

Academic Co-Investigator.

Prof. Fagan has over 30 years experience in finite element analysis with particular expertise in modelling and simulation of highly complex in structures such as those encountered in the mechanobiology of bone. He is responsible for the development of the VOX-FE software which is able to analyse and support remodelling of biomimetic structures under complex loading conditions.

Professor Ron Patton

University of Hull

Academic Co-Investigator.

Prof. Patton is Professor of Control and Intelligent Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Hull. He has over 30 years’ experience in fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control research in aerospace and renewable energy systems, with award of IEEE Fellow in 2010, following substantial international activity in IEEE and IFAC. He is Fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control.

Dr Howard Snelling

University of Hull

Academic Co-Investigator.

Dr Snelling is a Physics Lecturer in the school of Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Hull. His research is focussed on Applied Physics with a strong emphasis on the application of laser light and fundamentals of light-matter interactions. Collaboration with industry has featured strongly via the IeMRC, laser manufacturers (Lumonics, Rofin-Sinar), laser micromachining centres (Optek, Exitech, Oxford Lasers) and KTP projects (Purex International Ltd, BemroseBooth Paragon Ltd). He holds a portfolio of research grants as PI from industrial supporters, the EU-H2020, The Leverhulme Trust, and the EPSRC CIM-LbPP.

Dr Nevena Stevanovic

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy

Industrial Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP2, Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades.

Nevena is Technology Owner, leading the development of Condition Monitoring Systems (CMS) for Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) whose offshore technology centre has its headquarters at Brande, Denmark. She is responsible for the future offshore technology roadmap for the CMS and driving new technology development projects ensuring full utilization of the CMS potential and making sure that SGRE remains a leader in this field. She is a member of the Danish Standardization Group for condition monitoring and diagnostic of wind turbines.
She completed her PhD studies at Aalborg University in 2013 and before joining SGRE in 2015, she worked as an R&D engineer for Ramboll on development of customized structural health monitoring systems for offshore oil and gas platforms. Since joining SGRE, to support long term commercial product development, she has worked closely with academia and maintained close collaboration with UoS DRG through number of SGRE and EU funded development projects.

Dr Richard Clark

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy

Obtained his first degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sheffield and received a PhD in 1999 for research on permanent magnet actuators. Following several years as a post-doctoral Research Associate, he was awarded a 5 year Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship and became a Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield in 2005. In 2007 he joined Magnomatics, a University of Sheffield spin-out company developing novel electrical motors and generators and magnetic transmissions, where he held posts of R&D Manager, Research Director and Principal Engineer. He joined Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy as Electromagnetic Specialist in October 2017.

Dave Bould

Ørsted

Industrial Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP3, Novel Condition Monitoring and Fault Detection Techniques and Technologies.

David is Lead R&D Specialist for Ørsted Wind Power where he is responsible for defining and executing a global strategy for collaboration with universities and research organisations. He has held positions in ORE Catapult, the University of Edinburgh and the Carbon Trust, specialising in offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, and energy systems. He also previously worked offshore as a Chief Field Geophysicist in the oil & gas seismic survey sector. He holds an MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems and a BSc in Computer Science and Management Science. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he now lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jørn Scharling Holm

Ørsted

Industrial Co-Investigator.

Jørn Scharling Holm is mechanical engineer and Technology Partnership Manager in the R&D department of Ørsted Wind Power. In this role, Jørn has the overall responsibility of facilitating and managing R&D collaboration with external entities, such as Durham University, AURA, Carbon Trust, ORE Catapult, Industry forums and other entities. Prior to working with wind power, Jørn worked as a consultant on energy savings and he initiated R&D projects within a variety of technologies, including waste water plants, LED lighting for households and greenhouses, and groundwater heat pumps.

Laurence Cross

Ørsted

Industrial Co-Investigator.
Work Package Leader, WP3, Novel Condition Monitoring and Fault Detection Techniques and Technologies.

Keith Dean

Project Manager, University of Sheffield

He has over 25 years of experience working at the University of Sheffield in a number of roles: as a departmental manager in Civil and Structural Engineering and four professional services roles in the Finance Department, the Estates Department, the University Library and Research Services. His post is 0.5fte and based at the University of Sheffield.

Dr Bo Shao

University of Sheffield Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Bo Shao received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sheffield in 2022. His current research is focused on the fault tolerant control and pulse-width-modulation techniques for permanent-magnet synchronous machines, especially for dual three phase permanent-magnet synchronous machines.

Dr Chizhi (Chris) Zhang

University of Hull Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Dr Zhang received his PhD degree at the University of Greenwich in 2019. His research specialises in:
CFD and FEA analysis for steel, composite and biomimetic structure,
Reliability-based fatigue damage assessment for the blade, and
Optimum Operation and Maintenance (O&M) strategy of offshore structure.
On the Prosperity Partnership project, he will be working with the FE model of the wind turbine blade, and assisting the development of the VOX-FE software for remodelling of biomimetic structures under complex loading conditions.

Yi Wei

University of Sheffield/Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, PhD student

High-frequency effects in converter-fed electrical machines.

Weijiang Lin

University of Sheffield/Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, PhD student

A population-based mapping method for anomaly detection in wind turbine farms.

Jack Barker

Durham University/Ørsted, PhD student

Multi-spectral semi-supervised anomaly detection with applications to surface and sub-surface fault detection in glass fibre reinforced plastic composite materials.