Professor Deborah Greaves

DeborahGreaves is Head of the School of Engineering, Professor of Ocean Engineeringand Director of the COAST (Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport) Laboratory atthe University of Plymouth, she is Board Member and Inaugural Chair for PRIMaRE(the Partnership for Research In Marine Renewable Energy, www.primare.org).  From 2000 until February 2008, she was alecturer in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at theUniversity of Bath and held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship forsix years.  Before that, she was alecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCL for five yearsafter completing her DPhil at Oxford University, and prior to that shegraduated in Civil Engineering from Bristol University and worked as a civilengineer for four years. 

Her research interests include marine renewable energy, physical and numerical modelling of violent free surface flow and wave-structure interaction.  She is and has been involved with a number of research projects concerning marine renewable energy funded by EPSRC, GWR, EU Interreg, IEE, H2020, SWRDA, InnovateUK incollaboration with industrial and academic partners and is the new Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Supergen Leader (2017).  She recently led the 10 partner EU project SOWFIA on wave energy impactassessment, the 5 partner EP/J012866/1 and is leading 6 partner EP/M022382/1Collaborative Computational Project on Wave Structure Interaction (CCP-WSI), isChair of the CCP-WSI and member of the CCP Steering Panel. She leadsEP/N008847/1 A Zonal CFD Approach for Fully Nonlinear Simulations of TwoVessels in Launch and Recovery Operations and EP/K012177/1 on the hydrodynamicsof deformable flexible fabric structures. She also leads PU’s involvement withEU MARINET2 (and previously with MARINET), EU WETFEET, EU HYDRALAB Plus, UKCMERand on previous projects EP/J010235/1 on extreme loading in marine renewables.She has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, has secured £9.3 millionresearch income, is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of CivilEngineers, a Member of RINA (Royal Institution of Naval Architects), a Fellowof the Women’s Engineering Society, the Leadership Foundation and of the RoyalSociety of Arts, a member of the RCUK Energy Programme’s Scientific AdvisoryCommittee (2016 – present), a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel of ICE’sinternational journal Engineering and Computational Mechanics, a member of theeditorial board for the International Journal for Marine Energy, a member ofthe technical committee for EWTEC (European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference),a member of the South West Marine Energy Park Board, a member of the Society ofMaritime Industries’ ABOI Council, member of the Plymouth Employability SkillsBoard, a member of the Peer-review College of the EPSRC, a Member of the NERCPool of Technologies Reviewers, a reviewer for several journals, reviewer forinternational funding bodies (Singapore Agency for Science, Technology &Research (A*STAR), Science & Engineering Research Council (SERC), German Academic Exchange Service), Uppsala University,  edited a Wiley book on Wave and Tidal Energy (2018) and was shortlisted for the 2014 WISE Research Award.

Deborah Greaves is Director and led the development of the COAST (Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport) Laboratory, which represents a major enhancement in UK capability.  It was opened in October 2012 and was part-funded by ERDF funding through the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Department of Business, Innovation and Skills(BIS), Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in partnership with the University of Plymouth.  The facility was designed to provide a unique capability for research and testing of wave and tidal Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) devices, at scales suitable for single device or array testing, as well as for offshore engineering, coastal engineering and environmental impact modelling.  The facilities are nationally and internationally leading in their capability and comprise:

•  An ocean wave basin, 35 m long x 15.5 m wide x 3 m deep which is operable at different depths of water via a moving floor and which incorporates 24 flap wave-makers with the additional capability of a recirculating current both in-line with, and transverse to the waves
• A coastal basin, 15 m long x 10 m wide x 0.5 m deep, that has moveable modular piston wave-makers and a recirculating current
• A glass-sided sediment wave flume, 35 m long x 0.6 m wide x 0.8 m deep
• A glass-sided tilting wave flume, 20 m long x 0.6 m wide x 0.8 m deep.