Professor Deborah Greaves OBE

Deborah Greaves is Headof the School of Engineering and of the School of Computing, Electronics andMathematics, Professor of Ocean Engineering and Director of the COAST (Coastal,Ocean and Sediment Transport) Laboratory at the University of Plymouth, she isBoard Member and Inaugural Chair for PRIMaRE (the Partnership for Research InMarine 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 years aftercompleting her DPhil at Oxford University, and prior to that she graduated inCivil Engineering from Bristol University and worked as a civil engineer forfour years.

Her researchinterests include marine renewable energy, physical and numerical modelling ofviolent free surface flow and wave-structure interaction.  She is and has been involved with a number ofresearch projects concerning marine renewable energy funded by EPSRC, GWR, EUInterreg, IEE, H2020, SWRDA, InnovateUK in collaboration with industrial andacademic partners and is the new Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) SupergenLeader (2017).   She recently led the 10partner EU project SOWFIA on wave energy impact assessment, the 5 partnerEP/J012866/1 and is leading 6 partner EP/M022382/1 Collaborative ComputationalProject on Wave Structure Interaction (CCP-WSI), is Chair of the CCP-WSI andmember of the CCP Steering Panel. She leads EP/N008847/1 A Zonal CFD Approachfor Fully Nonlinear Simulations of Two Vessels in Launch and RecoveryOperations and EP/K012177/1 on the hydrodynamics of deformable flexible fabricstructures. She also leads PU’s involvement with EU MARINET2 (and previouslywith MARINET), EU WETFEET, EU HYDRALAB Plus, UKCMER and on previous projectsEP/J010235/1 on extreme loading in marine renewables. She has published over 150peer-reviewed papers, has secured £11.3 million research income, is a CharteredEngineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Member of RINA(Royal Institution of Naval Architects), a Fellow of the Women’s EngineeringSociety, the Leadership Foundation and of the Royal Society of Arts, a memberof the RCUK Energy Programme’s Scientific Advisory Committee (2016 – present),a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel of ICE’s international journalEngineering and Computational Mechanics, a member of the editorial board forthe International Journal for Marine Energy, a member of the technicalcommittee for EWTEC (European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference), a member ofthe South West Marine Energy Park Board, a member of the Society of MaritimeIndustries’ ABOI Council, member of the Plymouth Employability Skills Board, amember of the Peer-review College of the EPSRC, a Member of the NERC Pool ofTechnologies Reviewers, a reviewer for several journals, member of the RoyalSociety’s research Grants Board 20K (Physical Sciences) 2019 – 2021, reviewerfor international funding bodies (Singapore Agency for Science, Technology& Research (A*STAR), Science & Engineering Research Council (SERC), German Academic Exchange Service), UppsalaUniversity,  edited a Wiley book on Waveand Tidal Energy (2018) and was shortlisted for the 2014 WISE Research Award. Inthe Queen’s Birthday Honours List, 2018, she was awarded an OBE for services toMarine Renewable Energy, Equalities, and Higher Education.

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.