Professor Maurizio Collu

Personal statement

I am a Professor in Offshore Renewable Energy Engineering, and I joined the Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering Department of the University of Strathclyde in August 2018.

My area of expertise is applied mechanics, focusing on multidisciplinary, coupled model of dynamics of offshore renewable energy systems.

My research in the areas of analysis and design of floating offshore wind turbines and multi-purpose offshore structures is recognised as excellent at international level. I am also chair of the ITTC Ocean Renewable Energy committee (2021-24), member of the editorial board of the Ocean Engineering and Wind Energy Science journals, member of the scientific advisory committee in major international research projects and several offshore engineering conferences.

I have directly managed ~4.5M£ of public research funding, in projects for a total value of ~28.5M£, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC), Natural Environment Research Council UK (NERC), Newton funds UK, Innovate UK, Royal Society (UK), EETF (Scottish Government), ORE Catapult (UK), Energy FP7 and H2020 (EU).

I have also been working closely with the private sector, with companies ranging from small start-ups to large multinational energy companies. Some examples are:

• Concept selection and preliminary design of floating support structures for offshore wind turbine farms for offshore wind developers.
  
  
• Design support tool for innovative offshore wind turbine configurations, developing dedicated, advanced aero-hydro-servo-elastic coupled model of dynamics.
  
  
• Due diligence review of novel floating wind turbine support structure designs.
  
  
• Technical feasibility assessment of floating offshore wind turbine configuration with hydrogen production and storage facilities.

Selected list of publicly funded research projects (last years):

• Co-Investigator and Work Package leader in the 5 years (2021-2026), ~10M£ EPSRC project Ocean RE-Fuel (https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/W005212/1), leading the analysis and design of a floating wind turbine producing hydrogen in the offshore environment.
• Work Package leader in the 3.5 years (2018-2021), € 10m EU H2020 project “The Blue Growth Farm” (http://www.thebluegrowthfarm.eu/) (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/216067_en.html), focusing on the development and demonstration of a multi-functional platform for open sea farm installations of the Blue Growth Industry. I was in the development of a multidisciplinary, coupled model of dynamics of this multi-purpose platform.
  
  
• Principal Investigator of one of the five EPSRC/Newton funds Joint UK-China Offshore Renewable Energy flagship projects, the 3 years (2017-20), £ 0.8m project INNO-MPP  (http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/R007497/1), focusing on the development of multi-purpose offshore platforms for the sustainable development of small/isolated communities, exploiting the synergies among offshore renewable energy and aquaculture industries.
  
  
• Co-Investigator and Work Package leader in the 3 years (2017-20), 3 m£ EPSRC project HOME-Offshore (http://homeoffshore.org/), which focuses on merging Artificial Intelligence, Robotic inspection and Advanced Physics Modelling to lower the cost of offshore wind farm maintenance. My task focused on developing advanced model of dynamics for wind turbines.