Profile:
Professor Dimitris Drikakis is an accomplished researcher in computational science, machine learning, fluid dynamics, heat transfer and acoustics. His expertise has found applications in various fields, such as biomedical and engineering. Along with his research skills, he has extensive management and leadership experience. He holds the position of Professor at the Medical School & Sciences and Engineering School of the University of Nicosia, as well as the Vice President of Global Partnerships and the University’s Executive Director of Research and Innovation. Before this, he held various academic and executive management positions as a Professor, Executive Dean, and Head of Department at several UK universities for 24 years, including Strathclyde University, Cranfield University and Queen Mary University of London. He directed large academic centres and research infrastructures in the UK during his tenure. His contributions to engineering science, computational modelling, and simulations have been recognized with several awards, including the 2014 Innovator of the Year by the UK’s Institute of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange and twice the recipient of the William Penny Fellowship by the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment.
He has published around 475 papers and two books, and his work has been classified in the top 2% internationally by Stanford University. The rankings Research.com also classified him in the top 500 Mechanical and Aerospace Engineers worldwide. He has also served on several committees and advisory panels on research assessment and funding, including as deputy chair of the European Research Council panel PE8. As a visiting professor, he has taught at the Aix-Marseille University and the St Andrew’s Centre, home to the world-renowned specialist burns and plastic surgery service of Broomfield Hospital. His paper on Machine Learning for Computational Science and Engineering received the Best Paper Award in 2020 from the Computation Journal. His research articles on COVID-19 transmission, atmospheric pollution from rockets, and the impact of nuclear explosions have received hundreds of thousands of downloads and extensive media coverage worldwide. The special issue on Flow and the Virus he led at the American Institute of Physics has over 2 million downloads. He has successfully supervised 45 PhD students, many of whom hold senior academic or industry positions across diverse sectors worldwide.
Professional Career:
• University of Nicosia, Cyprus (2018 -)
– Vice President for Global Partnerships.
– Executive Director of Research and Innovation.
– Joint Professor’s appointment Sciences & Engineering and
Medical School.
– President, Defence & Security Research Institute.
• University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
(2015-2018)
– Executive Dean (Engineering).
– Professor of Engineering Science.
– Executive Director of Global University Partnerships.
• Cranfield University, United Kingdom (2003-2015)
– Head of Aerospace Sciences .
– Professor of Fluid Mechanics & Computational Science.
– Director of Research of Aerospace, Transport & Manufacturing.
• Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom (1999 – 2003)
– Professor of Fluid Mechanics.
• University of Manchester, United Kingdom (1995- 1999)
– Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering.
• University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany (1992-1995)
– Head of the Aerodynamics team.
– Senior Researcher.
• Other Visiting/Honorary posts:
– Professor at the University of Marseille, France
– Honorary Professor at City University London, UK
– Honorary Professor at St Andrews Centre for Plastic Surgery and Burns Broomfield Hospital, UK.
My research in brief:
It is multidisciplinary and covers engineering science, applied physics, applied mathematics, computational science, and emerging technologies. I am proud of applying my research across different sectors, including Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Defence, Medical, Energy, Environment, and Nuclear.
More details can be found in my full CV.
Awards:
• The William Penney Fellowship Award (twice in 2008 and 2011) by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE Plc) in recognition of my contribution to compressible fluid dynamics.
• The Innovator of the Year Award (2014) by the Innovation Institute (UK) for a new generation carbon capture technology that uses carbon nanotubes for filtering out carbon dioxide and other gases at low or zero energy cost. This platform technology can be used across a wide range of applications in the power generation, automotive, aerospace, chemical, marine and built environment sectors.
• The Technical Achievement Award at the International Conference on Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Aerospace and Sciences.
Some other key points/highlights:
• According to a team of researchers at Stanford University, Dimitris Drikakis has been included on 100,000 top scientists worldwide, the top 2% of scientists in their field. The updated 2020 list is based on a range of citation metrics that provides standardized data across those fields and subfields containing more than 8,000,000 scientists worldwide: Ioannidis JPA, Boyack KW, Baas J (2020) Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators. PLoS Biol 18(10): e3000918.
• The article by Dbouk, D. Drikakis, On coughing and airborne droplet transmission to humans Phys. Fluids 32, 053310 (2020) received one of the highest Altmetric Score of all American Institute of Physics publications. The above article has started changing policies and guidelines regarding social distancing in a few countries. There were stories from over 282 news outlets worldwide (see the media section for more information).
• The Special Issue on the Flow and the Virus that I coedited in the Physics of Fluids journal exceeded 2 million downloads (May 2020 to date)
• Completed the supervision of 45 PhD students and several MSc by Research students and mentored 21 post-doctoral fellows. All my former students now hold positions in academia and industries around the world.
• Published as a sole author and jointly with my PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and industrial collaborators, 442 articles (journal, conference papers, and book chapters), and two books.
• The paper on “Machine-Learning Methods for Computational Science and Engineering” by Professor Dimitris Drikakis et al. was recognised by Computation Journal with its 2020 Best Paper Award.
• I’ve served as Associate Editor or Member of the Editorial Board in many journals (see full CV), including Nature Scientific Reports, The Aeronautical Journal (Royal Aeronautical Society), Computers and Fluids, Journal of Fluids Engineering, Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience, Physics of Fluids (Advisory Board).
• A Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS, UK).
• A Senior Life Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA, USA).
• A Life Member of the American Physical Society (USA).