Energy Systems

Employment History

David was awarded a personal chair in Computational Fluid Dynamics by the Court of the University of Edinburgh in June 2009, following his appointment as a Reader in the Institute for Energy Systems in April 2006. He is currently the Director of Diversity & Inclusion in the School of Engineering and, since July 2011 has been Director of the Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE). Previously he was the Schools Director of Discipline for Engineering Mathematics, Director of Research and the Head of the Engineering Graduate School. He joined IES from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) where he was Reader in Scientific Computation in the Department of Computing and Mathematics. He joined MMU as lecturer in Mathematics (specialising in Numerical Analysis) following the completion of his PhD in 1992.

Major research grants

David is currently Research Director of the UK Centre for Marine Energy Research (EP/P008682/1, EP/M014738/1 & EP/I027912/1), a £5.3M, interdisciplinary, challenge led, collaborative research programme funded under the RCUK SuperGen programme that coordinates the research work of more than 100 academic and research staff across 25 UK Universities in both the wave and tidal energy sectors.

David is Director of the Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (EP/J500847/1), a £6.5M CDT that is training 66 EngD students from 2012-2022. IDCORE is funded by the ETI and the RCUK Energy programme and is run by a consortium of the Universities of Edinburgh, Exeter and Strathclyde, together with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and HR-Wallingford. It will be succeeded by the recently announced Industrial CDT in Offshore Renewable Energy (EP/S023933/1), funded by EPSRC and NERC, which will train an additional 50 EngD students.

He is an active member of RealTide (H2020-727689) project. He was part of the management teams for the WETFEET (H2020-641334), PolyWEC (FP7-309139), MARINA Platform (FP7-241402) and TROPOS (FP7-288192). He coordinated EquiMar (FP7-213380), a 22-partner project that developed protocols for the equitable evaluation of offshore renewable devices.

He was one of three investigators who secured £6M funding from the EPSRC to design build FloWave the worlds first, circular, combined wave and current test basin. He is presently the facility Director and recently led a submission to EPSRC’s Statements of Need for Medium Scale Research Facilities to bring together facilities in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Plymouth to form the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Since 1990, he has raised over £3M in research funding for his own University.

• PhD - Computational Fluid Dynamics, Manchester Metropolitan University, 1992.
• BSc (Hons) Mathematics, Statistics and Computing, University of Greenwich, 1988
• PGCE (Further, Adult and Higher Education), Manchester Metropolitan University, 1995

• Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology (IMarEST), 2019
• Charterd Marine Scientist, CSci, CMarSci, 2019

David is a member of the Mechanical Engineering discipline and is the Course Organiser for Computational Fluid Dynamics 5 and teaches on Partial Differential Equations 3.

He is also the Course Organiser for Engineering Mathematics 2A - teaching mathematical methods for the solution of higher order Ordinary Differential Equations and introducing Partial Differential Equations

David also teaches on the IDCORE programme and on the CDT in Wind and Marine Energy Systems.

• Free surface flow modelling
• Development of time marching computational fluid dynamics solvers
• Violent wave interaction with coastal structures
• Simulation of wave and tidal current renewable energy devices.
• Shallow water flow modelling
• The Cartesian cut cell method for boundary fitted mesh generation
• Technology Matching and Technology Evaluation

• Member of the Joint Research Institute in Energy, part of the Edinburgh Research Partnership funded by the Scottish Funding Council.
• Awarded the 1997 Busk Prize by the Council of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Dr Robin Wallace graduated in 1976 and has been involved in power generation and renewable energy throughout his career.

Until 1984 he worked in the Project Engineering Group of Parsons Peebles Motors and Generators, where ultimately he was an Assistant Chief Project Engineer responsible for turnkey power generation and discrete speed drive projects up to 25MVA in capacity, primarily hydro power plants.

Robin moved to University in 1986, where his research interests include: network integration of distributed renewable energy generation and marine energy. He is Principal Investigator and Finance Lead of the EPSRC SuperGen Marine Energy Consortium.

Robin is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the IEE and a board member of the Scottish Energy and Environment Foundation.

• Chartered Engineer
• Member of the IEE

• Principal Investigator and Finance Lead of the EPSRC SuperGen Marine Energy Consortium

I completed my PhD in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Tim Green in the Control & Power research group, Imperial College London, with a thesis titled 'Power Converter Design for HVDC Applications', for which I was awarded the departmental Eryl Cadwaladr Davies Prize for best doctoral thesis submitted in the academic year.

I have 28 published research papers (12 of which in IEEE Journals, 1 in an IET Journal, and three of which are co-authored with industry partners) on various topics relating to HVDC converters, such as optimised design of modular converter topologies, design of modular converters to enable short-term dynamic overload capabilities, power-loss and thermal modelling of semiconductor devices, hybrid converter topologies using mixed semiconductor technologies (IGBT and thyristor), and the design of converters with integrated energy storage. My paper to the 2018 IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery HVDC special issue was awarded the best paper award for the issue and also included as one of three papers on the journals 'papers received favourable reviews' list that year.

PhD - Electrical Engineering - Imperial College London - 2016

BEng (Hons) First Class - Electrical Engineering - University College Dublin - 2012

Member of IEEE and CIGRE

• Power Engineering 2 (2nd Year Module)
• Power Engineering Fundamentals (MSc Level Module)
• Advanced Power Electronics & Machines (MSc Level Module)
• Electrical Power Engineering Laboratory (MSc Level Module)

I am a Lecturer and holder of Elizabeth Georgeson Fellowship in Data and Digitalisation for Net Zero.

As a sustainable energy engineer and researcher, my ambition is to bridge the gap between academic research and implementation in the industry to accelerate the decarbonisation of energy systems. My research involves the use of data-driven and digital smart grid solutions and state-of-the-art technologies such as digital twin modelling, smart contracting, and AI as well as niche market mechanisms including smart local energy markets and flexibility trading.

Prior to my fellowship, I worked on the EPSRC DISPATCH Project towards multi-vector net zero heating and cooling solutions. I hold an award-winning Master of Engineering degree and a PhD from the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh. Recently, I won the Scottish Renewables Young Professionals Green Energy Award for my PhD project on bottom-up decarbonisation of smart local energy systems.

• Master of Engineering (Hons), Engineering in Sustainable Energy, University of Edinburgh, 2018
• PhD in Engineering, Impact of Peer-to-Peer Trading and Flexibility on Local Energy Systems, 2022 - link

• Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
• Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
• Affiliate Member of the Energy Institute (EI)
• Member of Women's Engineering Society (WES)
• STEM Ambassador for East Scotland

Teaching:

• Multi-Scale Energy Demand (PG, 20-credits) as Course Organiser
• Solar Power Conversion/Solar Energy & Photovoltaic Systems (UG, PG)

Project Supervision/Co-Supervision:

• MSc Sustainable Energy Systems
• MSc Electrical Power Engineering
• PhD Supervision
  • Tariro Mupfurutsa: "Co-Simulation and Optimization of Energy and Transport Networks for Sustainable Infrastructure Planning in the Context of Increased Electric Vehicle Adoption"
  • Weizhe Qin: "Dynamic Flexibility Mapping for Multi-Source Energy Systems in the Built Environment"

• List of publications on Google Scholar

• PhD (Nottingham)
• BEng (Nottingham), 1st Class Honours