Maritime Safety Research Centre

Alexandros Komianos

Alexandros is a research assistant and PhD candidate who joined the MSRC team on September 2019, having completed his MEng degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the department of NAOME of University of Strathclyde. Prior to joining the MSRC team, he was working as an independent surveyor in a prominent firm in Piraeus, Greece since 2010. During his stay he was involved in pre-shipment surveys, ship pre-purchase inspections, fire investigations/incidents, claims arising from collisions and other accidents, container certifications, General Averages, groundings and one Arbitration.

During his PhD candidacy he has been involved in ship related risk assessment and analysis with particular focus on fire, including fire risk, fire modelling and simulations on Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS)/Pyrosim. Moreover, to facilitate his research, he has also engaged with ship design (including engine room) as well as the development of safety barriers and the dynamic management of those. Finally, he is currently involved in two Horizon 2020 research projects, namely SafePASS and ShipFC. In the former he is responsible for conducting fire simulations on cabins, atrium, and the engine room of a large passenger ship, whereas on the latter on designing a container ship and retrofitting a bulk carrier both having an ammonia solid oxide fuel cell as a prime mover.

Charalampos Tsoumpris

Charalampos (Haris) received his MEng in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He has gained experience working in several technical offices in Athens, as well as, in designing 3D models of powerboats in a small shipyard.

He joined the Maritime Safety Research Centre (MSRC) as a PhD student in early 2020. His research focuses on the operation of autonomous ships power plants. His areas of interest include power plant modelling, supervisory control, condition monitoring and prognostics enabled decision making.

Fotios Stefanidis

An MEng graduate in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the University of Strathclyde. He graduated with distinction and during his academic years he was awarded the ABS Scholarship, been a chairman of SNAME UoS Student Section and mentor & coordinator on the departmental peer mentoring program ‘Orchid’. He has worked as an engineering trainee in the technical department of a shipping company with whom he collaborated for his dissertation on ‘Validation of a Ship Performance Monitoring Method’. His MEng risk based design project was on a cruise ship and was presented and published on the IMDC 2018 Conference. His main role as a Research Assistant is on the development of a dynamic risk modelling tool capable of assessing the risk of evacuation due to flooding and/or fire in real time by considering the particularities of the emergency state and he is assistant to the associate editor for the International Journal of Maritime Engineering. He is also working on a European funded project called ‘SafePASS’ which aims in the design of the next generation of life-saving appliances and improve evacuation procedures and performance on large capacity passenger ships.   

Hongseok (Elvis) Bae

Elvis started his professional career at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) in Korea as a naval architect and for the last twelve years has performed a wide range of tasks for commercial vessels, passenger ships, warships and offshore supply vessels.  In order to broaden and strengthen his theoretical knowledge, he achieved an MSc Degree with distinction at the University of Southampton in 2018. Now, he has joined the Maritime Safety Research Centre (MSRC) as a PhD student. His research focuses on improving cruise ship safety by analysing the crashworthiness of alternative designs under the supervision of Prof Dracos Vassalos, Dr Evangelos Boulougouris and Prof Jeom Kee Paik.

Jaehan Jeon

Mr Jaehan Jeon is a PhD student and research assistant at the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean, and Marine Engineering (NAOME) at University of Strathclyde. He obtained bachelor’s degree on engineering from the Department of Offshore Plant Management at Korea Maritime and Ocean University and achieved distinction on master’s degree on marine engineering with specialisation in autonomous marine vehicles at University of Strathclyde.

He joined the Maritime Safety Research Centre (MSRC) in October 2021. Before he started his PhD studies, he worked as a marine engineer on LNG carriers for four years, expertised on machinery operation and maintenance. His main research area is the machinery system of autonomous ship with research interests on Data Analysis, Machine Learning, Digital Twin, Prognostics and Health Monitoring.

Panagiotis Louvros

Mr. Panagiotis Louvros, MEng, is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Maritime Safety Research Center since 2019. He has attended and graduated from the University of Strathclyde NAOME department first joining in 2014. He had the oppurtunity to explore severals areas of Naval Architecture mainly focusing on ship design & optimization and damage stability. He has published in peer reviewed journals in the topic of general arrangement optimization and takes part in several projects since beginning his PhD. These projets include SEAMAN, SAFEPASS, ShipFC, FLARE as well as research work happening internally within MSRC.

His research interests focus on enhancing safety of passenger ships through improved flooding prevention and management. This research topic combines several sectors including hydrodynamics, compurter science, artificial intelligence and sensor/probability theory among others.

Since 2020 he is also the Postgraduate Researchers' represantive for the MSRC research area, representing students' interests with the faculty.

Panagiotis Karvounis

Panagiotis Karvounis, MSc, is a research assistant and PhD-candidate at the Maritime Safety Research Centre (MSRC) of the
Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering (NAOME) at the University of Strathclyde, since 2020. Previously,
he obtained his MSc degree, with a scholarship, from Politecnico di Milano in Italy, on the topic of Energy Engineering and holds a BSc degree
from the University of West Attica, in Mechanical Engineering. Previously, he has participated in research, funded by both, European and National programs
at the National Technical University of Athens. He has collaborated with international institutions, such as, the United Nations & Imperial Colledge London.

He has multi-disciplinary research interests with, several publications in peer-reviewed academic journals and participations in international conferences on the topics of
numerical analysis, life-cycle-assessment, climate change and, most recently, on carbon capture and storage. He is a member of the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London and United Nations Volunteers, since 2017.

Paul Lee

Mr. Paul Lee is a PhD student and research assistant at the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean, and Marine Engineering (NAOME) at the University of Strathclyde. Previously, he obtained his integrated master’s degree at the school of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). His graduation thesis was focused on the experimental investigation of the effect of superhydrophobic coating and microbubble lubrication on a scaled ship.

In February 2020 he joined the Maritime Safety Research Centre (MSRC) to conduct research on the safe e-navigation and collision avoidance of maritime autonomous surface ships. His area of interest is developing machine-learning based agents that enable safe evasive decisions, optimal control, safety-driven decision-making, digital twin simulations, physical model developing, and hands-on experiments.

Athanasios Niotis

Athanasios is a Naval Architect & Marine Engineer with M.Eng. from the National Technical University of Athens and his specialized field is the Ship Design. After his graduation, he had the opportunity to work in the maritime industry. In his current position is a doctoral student at the department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering, which has provided him with the opportunity to be involved in the research activities of the Maritime Safety Research Centre. The area of his research is the investigation of the dynamics of the water inside the damaged vessel and how this affects the flooding procedure and the survivability of the ship.