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Research Team

Marine Energy and Hydraulic Structures

Mission

The Marine Energy and Hydraulic Structures Group is committed to the development of environmentally friendly, sustainable, cost-effective and reliable cutting-edge technologies or solutions to effectively explore water resources and their vast potential, including the harnessing of marine and hydropower renewable energies, as well as to protect key infrastructures, assets and populations from natural hazards and to promote climate change resilience in the long term. Research activities focus on: marine and hydropower renewable energy assessment, development and testing of marine energy conversion technologies, design and testing of bottom-fixed and floating structures, aquaculture and mooring systems, risk assessment and reliability analysis, coastal protection interventions, nature-based solutions, breakwaters and ports design, assessment and mitigation of coastal risks, climate change adaptation pathways, dam engineering, among others. Furthermore, the group aims to provide cutting-edge knowledge and groundbreaking contributions to the design of hydraulic structures in general, including, dams, bridges, scour protections, water supply networks, water drainage systems, offshore structures, coastal structures, among many other examples, by means of both physical and numerical modelling. The group’s research lines aim to be aligned with the EU Green Deal strategy and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to promote the knowledge transfer towards the competitiveness of the stakeholders dealing with Marine Energy and Hydraulic Structures design, operation, maintenance and management.



Expertise

The main research areas are the development, modelling, design and optimization of technologies and solutions towards a vast array of fluvial, coastal and offshore applications. These range from marine renewable energy assessment and conversion to novel green-grey coastal interventions capable of withstanding the harshness of the sea environment in a context of climate change. The group also focus on research towards the multi-use of hydraulic infrastructures, e.g. combined aquaculture with offshore wind, wave and solar energy combined, among other examples. The group yields a vast expertise on optimised design, testing and development of Hydraulic Structures in general, from the fluvial to the offshore environment. This is possible due to the group’s top expertise in both physical modelling, with reduced-scale models tested in cutting-edge experimental facilities (wave basin, wave-current flume), and numerical modelling, via the application of a wide range of hydrodynamic and morpho-dynamic numerical codes (e.g., Delft3D, X-Beach, SWASH, Reef3D, HEC-RAS, PLAXIS 2D and 3D) as well as potential flow codes and advanced CFD models to assess soil-fluid-structure interaction and dynamics (e.g., BIEM, RANS, SPH, Flow 3D). Fluvial and Met-ocean statistical models for multivariate extreme phenomena prediction are also included (R, Python). An integrated approach to the full-water cycle is also in the group’s scope, namely, by concerning research on water quality, water re-use and other engineering and environmental related topics.



Facilities and Equipment

The main activities are conducted within the Hydraulics Laboratory, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. The facilities include a current flume with adjustable inclination, with 17 m in length, 40 cm in width and 60 cm in height, which is mainly used for fluid dynamics and sediment transport studies. There is also a 32.3 x 1.0 x 1.0 m wave-current flume, which is equipped with a wave piston-type paddle enabling the combined flow of waves and currents, to study 2D physical models of coastal structures, sediment transport and offshore foundations under regular and irregular sea-states. For both 2D and 3D models, there is a wave basin, 28 m long, 12 m wide and has a height of 1.2 m, with a central pit that enables to increase the water depth to 2.5 m. It is equipped with a multi-element piston-type wavemaker system capable of reproducing regular waves or irregular sea-states, including multi-directional waves. The wave basin has both active and passive absorption systems to reduce wave reflection. Auxiliary equipment includes resistive-type wave gauges, pressure sensors, a Qualisys motion tracking system, a LDA and ADVs, a 3D laser scanner, load cells and hydraulic pumps, a 3D printer, among others. There are also numerous simplified models, from a miniature wave flume to hydraulic circuits, made available for exposition and lecturing of visitors and/or students.



Research units and unit leaders:

  • Climate Change (Francisco Taveira Pinto)
  • Marine Energy (Paulo Rosa Santos)
  • Offshore Structures and Foundations (Tiago Fazeres Ferradosa)
  • Natured Base Solutions (Luciana das Neves)
  • Numerical Modelling (Francisco Taveira Pinto)
  • Harbours and Coastal Structures (Francisco Taveira Pinto)


    Key metrics (last 5 years)

  • Number of funded projects: 18 R&D projects
  • Total funding granted: over 5 M€
  • Number of PhD thesis: 14 (+ 16 ongoing)
  • Number of MSc thesis: 72
  • Indexed published papers: more than 200
  • Number of international and national conference articles: more than 230
  • Principal Investigator

    Team Leader

    Francisco Taveira Pinto is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Director of the Hydraulics Water Resources and Environment Division of DEC-FEUP, Member of the board of the Water Resources Institute and President of the Portuguese Water Resources Association. He received his degree in Civil Engineering in 1989, his PhD in 2002 in Civil Engineering – Coastal Engineering and his Aggregation in 2007 all at FEUP. His research interests focus on coastal structures, physical modelling, coastal management, coastal dynamics and sea energy. He is author of more than 70 scientific publications in international journals.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Co-Principal Investigator
    Researcher

    Paulo Rosa Santos is Associate Professor with Habilitation of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering – University of Porto. His main research field is the application of physical and numerical modelling to the study of offshore, port and coastal related topics. In the last 17 years, he collaborated in more than 45 R&D projects and consultancy studies in those fields. Supervisor/Co-supervisor of 35 finished M.Sc. Dissertations and 9 PhD students (ongoing) in the field of coastal engineering and marine renewable energy. Author of over 150 papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings (38 papers in Q1 journals). Chartered Engineer (2004), Senior Member (2013) and Specialist in Hydraulics and Water Resources (2019) by the Portuguese Engineering Council. Member of the Board of the Portuguese Water Resources Association – North Branch. PI, Co-PI or Researcher of 9 R&D projects in the field of ocean renewable energies and coastal engineering in the last 5 years (e.g., Atlantida, WEC4Ports, PORTOS, WECANet, ORACLE, SE@PORTS, HYDRALAB+, OPWEC, I.nano.WEC).

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Research Projects

    ATLANTIDA

    Ocean3R

    POSEIDON

    Team members

    PhD Student

    Ajab Gul MAJIDI is a doctorate (Ph.D.) researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and a researcher at CIIMAR. Ajab is presently working in the research team of the project "WEC4Ports – A Hybrid Wave Energy Converter for Ports" (OCEANERA/0004/2019), funded by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC). He got his MSc degree from Bursa Uludağ University in Turkey and developed his MSc thesis on the topic of Energy Production from Existing and Scaled Wave Energy Converters in the South-western Black Sea between 2018 – 2020. He was also involved in the Determination of Wave Energy Generation (Economic Wave Energy Potential) by Various WECs in the High Potential Regions of the Black Sea (TUBITAK Project) and Wave Spectra Climate of the Black and Azov Seas (RFBR -TUBITAK Bilateral Project). Both R&D projects are related to Coastal Engineering and Marine Renewable Energy. Ajab is author of several scientific peer-reviewed publications and conference papers.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Cristina Matos is an assistant professor at the UTAD School of Science and Technology since 2009. She graduated in Environmental Engineering in 2001, defended her master’s dissertation in 2003, with the theme “Wastewater from small settlements – treatment, reuse and monitoring.” She completed his doctorate in 2009 with the thesis “Water reuse: greywater reuse in situ“. Her main research area, as evidenced by its scientific publications, focuses on the efficient use of water and the search for alternative water sources such as rainwater harvesting systems and water reuse.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Ph.D. Ana Margarida Bento is a post-doctorate researcher at POSEIDON project, at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). She is currently the co-coordinator of the R&D unit Offshore Structures & Foundations of Marine Energy group at CIIMAR. She developed her Ph.D. thesis in a partnership between the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) and FEUP, under the FCT PhD Program InfraRisk – Infrastructure Risk Analysis and Mitigation. The work carried out consisted of the development of a pragmatic methodology for the assessment and rating of risk associated with bridge foundation scour, using a semi-quantitative priority factor. The scour risk assessment was based on an interdisciplinary approach that combined experimental and numerical analysis to achieve a more advanced and comprehensive understanding of the scouring phenomenon in the vicinity of bridge foundations, under clear water and live bed flow conditions. She completed her MSc in Civil Engineering (Hydraulics and Water Resources) in 2013 at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). The master's thesis focused on the characterization of dam breaching following overtopping and the work was developed at LNEC. She did an international internship at Faculdades Integradas de Aracruz (FAACZ, Brazil), from IAESTE (International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience), about the construction of irrigation dams in the Municipality of Aracruz. In 2014, she integrated the Hydraulics, Water Resources and Environment Division of FEUP as a master researcher in the project NUMPIERS – Numerical and experimental study of the flow around complex bridge piers. In July 2021, she joined the research project InfraCrit – Development of predictive system for critical infrastructure management, as a postdoctoral researcher at ISISE (UMinho). Her role consisted of management and risk prediction of critical infrastructures subject to flood events, on a GIS integrated platform. In May 2022, she joined the national project GIIP – Intelligent Management of Port Infrastructures as the technical and financial coordinator within UMinho. During her professional work, she collaborated with national companies such as IP and EDP, and several universities such as IST (Portugal), FAACZ (Brazil), FEUP (Portugal), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), University of Minho (Portugal), and Universidade Agostinho Neto (Angola). She is a member of FOAM@PT, Order of Engineers, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR), Portuguese Association for Classification and Data Analysis (CLAD), Portuguese Water Resources Association (APRH), Specialized Committee on River Hydraulics (CEHF), Specialized Committee on Water and Energy (CEAE), Hydraulics (CEHF), and International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE). Within IABSE, she is currently contributing to the task groups TG5.2 and TG6.1. From 2018 to 2020, she joined the leadership team of Young Professionals Network of the Portuguese IAHR. She co-supervised a master's student of Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), from 2019-2020. She joined the scientific committee of four peer-reviewed journals (as a reviewer) and of two conferences, and has taught an academic session to a class of Civil Engineering master's students of ISEL. Recently, she was involved in the jury committee of 2 thesis defences, a Master's and a Doctorate's. She aided the preparation of proposals for FCT R&D Projects (as a team member in 2020 and as a co-PI in 2022). She is also involved in international scientific proposals, 2 as a team member and 1 as a leader. Ph.D. Ana Margarida Bento is also the author and co-author of several peer-reviewed journal and conference scientific articles (h-index of 3, 9 publications and 42 citations in the Scopus at 02/2023).

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Andreia Moreira is a PhD researcher at UPorto (Portugal), graduated from the same institution. She developed her master thesis project in entrepreneurial environment, on the topic of feasibility analysis of the construction of small and medium hydropower plants. From 2012 to 2015 she was dedicated to the Scourcoast project, in which she developed research on sustainable coastal protection techniques. She started conducting her doctoral studies in 2015, supported by a PhD scholarship granted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Since then, she has been developing her work on the adaptation and application of a numerical code, based on a weakly compressible formulation of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method, to simulate spillway flows. During her PhD research, she has been collaborating with the Saint-Venant Hydraulics Laboratory (LHSV), in France. Her research interests are towards the understanding of turbulent high-speed flows, dam safety and the development of numerical tools to spillway risk assessment and mitigation.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Beatriz Queirós is a PhD researcher at UPorto (Portugal), who graduated from the same institution. She developed her master thesis project in entrepreneurial environment, on the topic of SPH application to reproduce a real rubble-mound breakwater – the Port of Leixões Northern breakwater, Portugal. After graduating, from 2016 to 2018, she was working as a design engineer in a hydraulic company, where she consolidated her knowledge in water supply systems, as well as in wastewater systems. In addition, she had the opportunity to contact and use an extensive set of numerical tools on various projects. She started conducting her doctoral studies in 2018, supported by a PhD scholarship granted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and she is currently developing her PhD research work, which involves the study of rubble-mound structures, using advanced physical modelling techniques and also advanced numerical modelling tools, including the application of programs such as DualSPHysics. Her research interests are towards the comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena related to the interaction between incident waves and rubble.mound breakwaters and also the validation and improvement of the SPH DualSPHysics model with regard to the simulation of wave run-up and overtopping.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Invited Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering Department of University of Porto, Faculty of Engineering, and a consultant and design engineer (effective member of the Portuguese Chamber of Engineers: professional card nr. 55737). She worked between 2008 and 2013, in SOPSEC,SA elaborating and managing projects of Civil Engineering and completed her PhD in 2012. She is the author and co-author of several publications in national and international journals, book chapters and in international conferences, related to the subject areas of water and water resources, water and wastewater treatment and environmental engineering.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Research Grant

    Ph.D. Daniel Clemente is a Junior Researcher at U.Porto and CIIMAR (Portugal), who studies marine renewable energy (MRE) since his M.Sc. Thesis on the E-Motions converter. Since 2017, he participated in the Se@Ports, I.nano.WEC and ATLANTIDA projects. In 2020, he received an FCT Ph.D. grant, which was successfully concluded in July 2022. His expertise includes 2D/3D physical modelling of wave energy converters, as well as numerical modelling through ANSYS Aqwa, DualSPHysics and SWAN softwares. His research interests focus on developing MRE technologies, potential applications, and beneficial synergies with other fields of research, from offshore aquaculture to coastal protection.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD student

    Esmaeil Zavvar was born in Tabriz, Persia, holds a Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering and Master in Marine Structures. Now, he is a PhD student at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) with FCT scholarship since 1 Sep 2023. He has about 10 years of experience in civil engineering as a construction supervisor and site engineer. And about 9 years experience in Marine structure analysis on fixed and offshore floating structures. His academic experiences including some publications: some journal papers, book chapters, conferences, books in high-ranked journals and universities. He is a reviewer in about 30 journals in Elsevier, Springer, SAGE, Taylor and Francis Group, reviewed above 300 papers since 2017.
    His research area: Fatigue and fracture, Structural analysis, Impact analysis, Offshore Floating Structures, Hydrostatic and Hydrodynamic analysis, Probabilistic and reliability analysis, Strengthening methods with FRP and Concrete. Renewable energy, wind and wave convertors.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Research Technician

    Filipe da Costa Miranda is a researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (Portugal) who graduated from the same institution. He developed his master thesis project on the topic of scour around co-located marine energy harvesting technologies, as part of the project “POSEIDON – Damage Prediction and Design of Scour Protection in Complex Foundations for Marine Renewable Energy”. After graduating, he continued as a research fellow at the IHRH – Hydraulics and Water Resources Institute in the project “Aquabreak – Aquaculture Living Breakwater for Coastal Protection and Sea Decarbonization” in a joint venture with HAEDES Portugal, Lda., while still collaborating in the POSEIDON project.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Filipe is a Chartered Coastal Scientist/Engineer with over 15 years’ experience working in Europe, South America, Africa and the Middle East on a variety of ocean, coastal and port engineering projects. Previous experience in consultancy includes planning, design and tender preparation for intakes and outfalls, small harbours and marinas, ports, LNG and crude oil terminals, coastal structures, artificial islands, navigation and mooring studies, numerical modelling of coastal processes and field data collection. Filipe worked for the government and private sectors in both engineering and research projects. He is currently working at the American University of Sharjah where he conducts research in the fields of ocean and coastal engineering.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Francisco V. C. Taveira Pinto is a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (Portugal), graduated from the same institution. After finishing his Integrated Master’s Degree, Francisco has integrated the Engineering and Research Area at the Hydraulics and Water Resources Institute (IHRH), developing his engineering, physical and numerical modelling skills. His scientific research focuses on coastal protection structures, coastal erosion, scour phenomena near segmented detached structures, climate change and composite modelling. With respect to his professional activities, Francisco has been working under several projects namely: “Risk Characterization Study and Intervention Programme for the Protection of the Ofir’s Sandspit and Cávado’s river mouth”, “ATLANTIDA – Platform for the monitoring of the North Atlantic Ocean and tools for the sustainable exploitation of the marine resources” and more recently “Port Loyola Cruise Terminal, Model-based research”.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Dr. Gianmaria Giannini is a researcher at CIIMAR and the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP), specialized in marine engineering, science, and technology. He holds a PhD in offshore engineering, focusing on wave energy converters, and an MSc in Offshore renewable energy (ORE) from the University of Strathclyde (UK). Currently, he leads a 6-year project titled ‘Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design of Wave Energy Converters,’ funded by FCT and supported by FEUP. With 30+ scientific papers, he contributed to 6 marine energy projects and spent 2 years in private ORE companies. His interests include science, electronics, programming, climate, and sustainability.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    João Ricardo de Sá Chambel is a PhD researcher and Civil Engineer at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), graduating from the same institution. He developed a master’s thesis project on the topic of Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations. After finishing, he continued as a research fellow at the IHRH – Hydraulics and Water Resources Institute and FEUP, where he had the opportunity to work on several projects such as: Deviation Infrastructure for Rio de Vila (Metro do Porto), Detached Breakwaters and Artificial Reefs for the Carneiro Beach (Porto), Coastal Erosion at the Esposende Sandspit (Esposende), the ORACLE project – Offshore Risk Analysis for Climate Change and Lifetime Extension of offshore foundations, and the POSEIDON project – Damage Prediction and Design of Scour Protections in Complex Foundations for Marine Renewable Energy. He developed skills in physical & numerical modelling, offshore foundations, risk & reliability analysis, scour phenomena, and climate changes. He also worked as a Civil Engineer at the company Noraqua (Porto), while still maintaining research cooperation with his previous team. In 2021, he obtained a PhD grant for the topic of Optimization of Scour Protections for Hybrid Offshore Foundations with Complex Geometry at FEUP and Oregon State University (EUA). During his short career, he was privileged to work and learn from recognized engineers in his field, namely with Francisco Taveira Pinto (FEUP), Pedro Lomonaco (Oregon State University), Tiago Ferradosa (FEUP), Paulo Santos (FEUP), and Mario Welzel (TU Braunschweig). His interests are extended to Offshore Structures & Foundations, Marine Renewable Energy, Scour (Protections), and Coastal Erosion.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD student

    Born and raised in Natal, Northeast Brazil, he is passionate about coastal sciences, more especially, processes involving ocean waves. He holds a bachelor’s in Environmental Engineering from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, with an exchange period at The University of Adelaide, Australia, with postgraduate studies in Physical Oceanography at the University of Sao Paulo and a Master’s in Water and Coastal Management at the universities of Bologna, Cadiz, and Algarve, within the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree program. He also has professional experience in the private sector, working as a numerical modeler for coastal processes, and in research institutes such as LNEC, Lisbon, and IH Cantabria, Santander. He is currently holding a researcher contract with CIIMAR and pursuing his Ph.D. on Civil Engineering – Hydraulics and Coastal Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, as a fellow of the “la Caixa” foundation.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Victor Ramos (PhD) research focuses on the field of marine renewable energy (wave and tidal stream energy), dealing with some crucial aspects such as: resource, characterisation, performance of different technologies of energy converters (tidal and wave energy converters) and the potential impacts on the marine environment (wave climate, transient and residual estuarine dynamics, sediment transport and turbulence conditions).

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Luciana das Neves holds a PhD degree in Civil Engineering from the UPorto. She is an Engineer-Advisor at IMDC nv – Belgium and a Guest Assistant Professor at UPorto – Faculty of Engineering in the fields of hydraulic engineering and fluid mechanics. She is an experienced project manager having managed and carried out numerous projects around the world related to coastal climate risk and resilience and marine engineering. Luciana specialises in designing and implementing projects concerned with coastal protection and defence structures and strategic coastal planning and management. Her research interests involve climate change adaptation, resilience in development strategies and nature-based solutions in flood- and coastal-risk management.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Luiz Paulo Pinto Ferreira holds a Master degree in Civil Engineering from the UPorto, a Mastère Spécialisé in Ouvrages Maritimes‎ et Portuaire from ESITC Caen, MBA in Project Management from FRB|Devry Brasil, PMP-PMI certificated and a bachelor degree in Civil Engineering Universidade Federal da Bahia. He is currenlty a PhD student at UPorto – Faculty of Engineering in the fields of hydraulic engineering. He is an experienced project manager having managed and carried out numerous construction projects in Brazil related maritime ports and river dredging and participated in physical modelling of coastal protection structures at Waterbowukundig Laboratorium. His research interests involve climate change adaptation, coastal dynamics, wave structure interaction and wave behaviour in very shallow waters.

     

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD student

    Mahmoud is a PhD student and researcher at UPorto FEUP. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Egypt in 2016. In 2021, he got his Master’s degree in coastal engineering where he developed a 2D coastal morphological model on MATLAB. With a keen interest in numerical modeling and the integration of machine learning within coastal engineering, Mahmoud is exploring innovative approaches. In his ongoing doctoral research, he is studying the possibility to use artificial intelligence to surrogate numerical models, aiming for enhanced accuracy and computational efficiency.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Maria Francisca Sarmento is a researcher ate Uporto (Portugal) who graduated from the same institution. She developed her master thesis project in FEUP with a partnership of Ciimar about the effect of Climate changes in Douro’s estuary. Her master thesis project focused on 2D numerical modelling in OpenTelemac Mascaret software to simulate several extreme scenarios and evaluate their hydrodynamic and morphodynamic effects in the estuary. After graduating, she continued her research in collaboration with Ciimar in the project ATLANTIDA on the topic of climate change, where she investigates the effects of NBM – Nature Based Methods on the Cavado´s river mouth hydrodynamics and morphodynamics.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Research Grant

    Navid Eshaghi is a Ph.D. researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and a researcher at CIIMAR. He is presently working in the research team of the POSEIDON project. Navid´s MSC thesis was analyzing Hydraulics parameters performance in open channels and rivers by using numerical modeling (Ansys-fluent)software and extended his research on pollutants moving in the river. Also, He was working as a researcher and designer on the water transition system project after graduating with his MSc in Iran.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Paulo Rosa Santos is Associate Professor with Habilitation of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering – University of Porto. His main research field is the application of physical and numerical modelling to the study of offshore, port and coastal related topics. In the last 17 years, he collaborated in more than 45 R&D projects and consultancy studies in those fields. Supervisor/Co-supervisor of 35 finished M.Sc. Dissertations and 9 PhD students (ongoing) in the field of coastal engineering and marine renewable energy. Author of over 150 papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings (38 papers in Q1 journals). Chartered Engineer (2004), Senior Member (2013) and Specialist in Hydraulics and Water Resources (2019) by the Portuguese Engineering Council. Member of the Board of the Portuguese Water Resources Association – North Branch. PI, Co-PI or Researcher of 9 R&D projects in the field of ocean renewable energies and coastal engineering in the last 5 years (e.g., Atlantida, WEC4Ports, PORTOS, WECANet, ORACLE, SE@PORTS, HYDRALAB+, OPWEC, I.nano.WEC).

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Rui Figueiredo is a researcher at CIIMAR and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). His main research interests include natural hazard damage and loss modelling, risk assessment, and risk management, with a focus on hydro-meteorological phenomena. He has (co-)authored, among other publications, over 15 articles on these topics in Web of Science-indexed scientific journals.
    Rui graduated in Civil Engineering from FEUP in 2006. Between then and 2013 he worked as a multidisciplinary engineering designer and project manager, having participated in over one hundred national and international engineering projects. In 2015, he obtained his Master’s degree in Risk and Emergency Management from the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Italy. In 2018 he obtained his Doctoral degree from the same institution within the Understanding and Managing Extremes PhD program.
    Rui has participated in several research projects, including as Principal Investigator of a 2-year project supported by the highly competitive Disaster Risk Financing Challenge Fund. He has also participated in the development of risk models for several international stakeholders involved in disaster risk management activities.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    PhD Student

    Sara Oliveira Pinto is a Senior Researcher in Renewable Energy at Equinor and CIIMAR and a PhD researcher at UPorto, where she graduated with a Masters developed in collaboration with Instituto Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) and Consulmar, on the topic of perforated vertical harbour structures: design and experimental evaluation. Sara has been working in the Oil & Gas sector as a Subsea Engineer focusing in major capital projects and currently while still at Equinor, as a Senior Researcher in Renewable Energy, working mainly with solar energy, as a technical advisor to solar energy projects, performing market research of new & niche solar energy solutions, mainly within floating solar and in solutions & strategies for operation and maintenance of utility-scale solar parks. During her work she has collaborated with various research entities such as MIT Energy Initiative (MITei), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Institutt for energiteknikk (IFE) and Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) with a main focus as radical innovation within the renewable energy domain. She is currently undertkaing her doctoral studies on the topic of wave energy converters, identifying a niche market enabler to launch commercial feasibility of the wave energy sector, and at a later stage proposing a novel hybrid wave energy converter.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Seyed Shahabedin Khalooei is a researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. I am presently working in the research team of the project “WEC4Ports – A Hybrid Wave Energy Converter for Ports” (OCEANERA/0004/2019), funded by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC). I got my MSc degree from the University of Tehran the most prestigious university in Iran and conducted my MSc thesis on the topic of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) titled “Experimental investigation on Wave-Induced Vibrations (WIV) of The Tandem Circular Cylinders.”. I was also at the Hydraulic lab of the University of Tehran as a research assistant.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Researcher

    Tiago Fazeres Ferradosa is a Professor at Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto and researcher CIIMAR. Tiago is currently responsible for the R&D unit Offshore Structures & Foundations at the Marine Energy Group. Tiago was an MSc. researcher at University College London and developed his PhD in UPORTO on the topic of reliability analysis of optimised scour protections for offshore foundations. He is also involved as responsible, co-responsible and team member, in the several R&D projects related to offshore engineering and marine renewable energy research, such as MARINET proposal 61; HYDRALAB+ (Proteus proposal); ORACLE; POSEIDON and i.nano.WEC. He performs supervision activities of doctoral and master degree students in civil engineering at the University of Porto and has been responsible for the organisation of more than 45 conferences, courses, symposia and other scientific and professional events. He is the editor of the IAHR Newsflash Europe and co-Editor in Chief of Maritime Engineering (ICE). He acts as member of the editorial panel in 17 international peer-reviewed journals and was Guest Editor of SI in Renewable Energy (Elsevier) and reviewer in other 27 international peer-reviewed journals. Tiago is the author of more than 56 scientific journal peer-reviewed publications (indexed in Scopus and WoS) and founder and co-organiser of the IOSD course series. He was President of the IAHR Portugal Young Professionals Network, the Coordinator of the Young Professionals of the Portuguese Association of Water Resources and elected member of the Monitoring Committee of the Civil Engineering Doctoral Program between 2016 and 2018. He is the Portuguese appointed member of the Technical Committee 213 – Scour and Erosion of the ISSMGE. Dr. Tiago was also the awarded researcher of the APRH best PhD thesis of 2018/2019, the Young JMSE researcher award of 2021, Best JMSE Paper award 2022 and co-winner of the Halcrow Prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 2022. He acts as an external evaluator at Stavanger University (Norway) and was the President of the Specialized Commission Water and Energy of APRH from 2022-2023 and is currently member of the board of APRH. Currently, is also member of the Executive Committee of the Civil Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of UPorto.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:
    Research Grant

    Tomás Calheiros Cabral is a PhD student at the Hydraulic Structures and Marine Energy Group of FEUP/CIIMAR , who obtained a Master’s Degree from the same institution in Civil Engineering – Hydraulics, in 2018. He developed his master thesis project in entrepreneurial environment, on the topic of breakwater-integrated wave energy converters. After graduating, he continued as a research fellow in the SE@PORTS project. After the end of this project, he carried out his research on Marine Renewable Energy, particularly in ports, as a research fellow on the PORTOS project. Having obtained a PhD grant in 2021, he started his PhD on the development of a hybrid WEC for breakwater integration.

    During his research fellowships and PhD, he participated in multiple research projects related to Marine Renewable Energy and coastal protection. He has extensively expanded his expertise in physical and numerical modelling of coastal and offshore structures through several projects, mobility programs, training schools and workshops abroad. He is experienced in physical model testing of MRE and coastal protection structures, and in the use of OpenFOAM and DualSPHysics for engineering applications. Moreover, he taught in multiple didactic events for students (Montra UP, Universidade Junior) and industry-aimed (Course “Marine Renewable Energies and their integration in Ports”). Tomás is the (co-)author of 17 journal and conference publications on various topics.

    RESEARCH TEAMS:

    Main publications

    Marine renewable energy.

    Taveira-Pinto, F., Rosa-Santos, P., Fazeres-Ferradosa, T.

    2020Renewable Energy, 150: 1160-1164
    Sensitivity of OWC performance to air compressibility.

    Lopez, I., Carballo, R., Taveira-Pinto, F., Iglesias, G.

    2020Renewable Energy, 145: 1334-1347
    Overview of Large-Scale Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Modeling of Dam Hydraulics.

    Moreira, A., Leroy, A., Violeau, D., Taveira-Pinto, F.

    2020Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 146 (2), 3119001
    Extended characterization of damage in rubble mound scour protections.

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