Academic staff

• BEng (First Class Hons), Loughborough University
• PhD (Civil Engineering), University of Edinburgh

• Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE)
• Chartered Engineer (Registered with the Engineering Council)

I have been teaching at University of Edinburgh for nearly three decades and in that time have contributed project management and risk management material to the School of Mathematics and University of Edinburgh Business School. In recent years I have focussed solely on Civil and Environmental Engineering and cover the following topics:

• Civil Engineering Construction As a Construction Engineer by profession and past experience I am passionate about the physical delivery of civil engineering projects. I have been lucky enough to experience the tremendous satisfaction of literally getting ones hands dirty in the creation of large pieces of infrastructure. And I try to bring that to the classroom. This subject will from 2025 be delivered to our Second Year students (having been part of the third year for a long time) and contains two critical modules: Health and Safety in Construction (planning and undertaking construction with all hazards understood and managed); and Temporary Works (those parts of construction that allow the 'permanent' works to be built).
• Engineering Project Management I am one of the few academics in this school who has real world experience of the delivery of Engineering projects; specifically the delivery of large infrastructure. Together with my colleague Dr Frédéric Bosché we cover this School wide course taken by both 4th & 5th year UG students and MSc students. The course considers the key aspects of how an engineering project - whether that be a very large infrastructure project or an IT project or a chemical engineering plant, for example - is taken through its lifecycle from conception to use and decommissioning.
• Research Methods for Engineers Taught as a sister course to our UG Thesis and MSc Dissertation projects, this course considers not just 'how to' do a research project and write up its report (its Thesis or Dissertation - there are no real differences); but also the methodological aspects of doing robust research. I present my Three-Stage model of research: Framing; Doing; Making-sense, as well as considering the communication, dissemination, ethics and publishing aspects of engineering research.

• Management of Construction Safety Risk
• Construction Management
• Earthworks and earthmoving control
• Cyclic construction process management and estimation
• Scheduling of in-situ concreting operations

http://www.optical-communications.eng.ed.ac.uk/

Wasiu O. Popoola is a Professor of Communications Engineering and the current Director of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. From 2019-2024, he was a Deputy Director of Learning and Teaching leading the School's initiatives on Widening Participation & Outreach. In 2022, he was awarded RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for his work on ‘ethical LiFi’ research. He has published over 200 journal articles, conference papers, patent and several invited articles. He also co-authored the acclaimed book ‘Optical Wireless Communications: System and Channel Modeling with MATLAB’ and many other book chapters. His primary research interests are digital and optical communications, including VLC/LiFi, FSO, and fiber communications. One of his journal articles ranked No. 2 in terms of the number of full text downloads within IEEE Xplore, in 2008, from the hundreds of articles published by IET Optoelectronics, since 1980. Another article he co-authored with one of his Ph.D. students received the Best Poster Award at the 2016 IEEE ICSAE Conference. Popoola is a science communicator appearing in science festivals and on “BBC Radio 5live Science” programme in Oct. 2017. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Access Journal, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology (FIET), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a Senior Member of IEEE . He was an invited speaker at various events including the IET Lunch and Learn Lecture 2024, Rank Prize Symposium 2024, IEEE Photonics Society Summer Topicals 2016 among others.

• BSc (First Class Hons), MSc (Distinction), PhD

• Fellow Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
• Fellow IET (FIET)
• Senior Member IEEE
• Member IEEE Photonic Society

• Wireless Communication systems
• Optical Fibre Communications
• Free-Space Optical Communications
• Visible Light Communications

Dani is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at the Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids (IMT) at the School of Engineering (SoE) at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) since August 2022 and prior to this, he was a Lecturer since December 2018. In addition, Dani holds a Visiting Associate Professor at WPI-I2CNER (World Premier International Research Center – International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research) at Kyushu University Japan since April 2019, from the São Carlos School of Engineering at the University of São Paulo in 2024, and a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) since May 2021.

Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh Dani was part of the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) at Kyushu University in Japan where he spent 3 years as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and further 2 years as Assistant Professor. During this time, he also served as Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in USA for 4 months. Before joining Kyushu University Dani completed PhD at the Institute for Materials and Processes (IMP) at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining the Institute of Materials and Processes (IMP), he carried out an internship at the Institute for Energy Systems (IES) of the UoE. Before joining the University of Edinburgh, Dani was an Undergraduate Research Assistant at AICIA (Andalusian Association for Research and Industrial Cooperation) and at the Chemical Engineering Department at The Higher Technical School of Engineering in Seville Spain where he obtained his 5-years Bachelor’s degree in Environmental and Industrial Chemical Engineering with one year completed at the Scuola di Ingegneria University of Bologna in Italy.

In addition, Dani acted as an Associate Editorship for the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (Elsevier) between January 2021 and December 2023 and as Foreign Expert Visitor at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China in 2023.

5-year Bachelor/s in Environmental and Industrial Chemical Engineering (The Higher Technical School of Engineering, Seville, Spain 2009).

PhD Applied Physics of Droplet Phase-Change (Institute of Maerials and Processes, University of Edinburgh, 2013).

Postgraduate Certificate Academia in Practice PgCAP (University of Edinburgh, 2021)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA, 2021)

Associate Editor for the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (Elsevier, 2021)

WPI-I2CNER Visiting Associate Professor at International Research Center – International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (Kyushu University Japan, 2019)

Associate Member Institution of Chemical Engineers (AMIChemE, 2015)

Member of the Asociación de Científicos Españoles en Japón (ACE Japón, 2017)

Member of the American Physical Society (APS, 2016)

Member of the American Chemical Society (ACS, 2012)

School Postgraduate Progression Committee (SPPC) Representative for the Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

School Postgraduate Experience Committee (SPEC) Representative for the Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

Teaching Laboratory Manager for the Chemical Engineering Discipline (University of Edinburgh, 2020)

Course Organiser Practical Skills in Chemical Engineering CHEE08018 (University of Edinburgh, 2021)

Course Organiser CEL3 Chemical Engineering Laboratory 3 CHEE11028 (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

Academic Research Projects 5 CHEE11017 (University of Edinburgh, 2020)

Academic Industrial/Overseas Projects 5 CHEE11031 (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

Academic Study Project 4 CHEE10009 (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

Academic Design: Projects 4 CHEE10002 (University of Edinburgh, 2018-2020)

I am always open to enquire for supervision of self-funded and sponsored PhDs as well as hosting visiting researchers from all over the world.

Here are some useful links with some potential Scholarships:

School of Engineering University of Edinburgh:

https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/student-funding/postgraduate/international/science-engineering/school-of-engineering

https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/student-funding/postgraduate/international/other-funding

Commonwealth PhD Scholarships for Low Income Countries:

https://cscuk.fcdo.gov.uk/scholarships/commonwealth-phd-scholarships-for-least-developed-countries-and-vulnerable-states/

Other issues on concerns please reach at d.orejon@ed.ac.uk

Practical Engineering Education Conference 2026

I am Conference Chair for PEE26, and looking forward to hosting colleagues from across the world in Edinburgh on 2nd and 3rd July 2026.

Visit our PEE26 conference website for further information.

https://vios.science

Sotirios A. Tsaftaris is currently Chair (Full Professor) in Machine Learning and Computer Vision at the University of Edinburgh. He also holds the Canon Medical/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Healthcare AI. He is an ELLIS Fellow of the European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) of Edinburgh’s ELLIS Unit. Since 2023 he is a visiting researcher with Archimedes RC a research centre of excellence in AI in Athens, Greece. Between 2016 and 2023 he was a Turing Fellow with the Alan Turing Institute.

He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, in 2003 and 2006, respectively, and the Diploma degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2000.

Previously he was an Assistant Professor with IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy and the Director of the Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Unit at IMT. Prior to that, he held a joint Research Assistant Professor appointment at Northwestern University with the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Radiology Feinberg School of Medicine. He maintained an adjunct appointment with EECS (2011-2015), and an affiliation with the Image and Video Processing Laboratory (IVPL), at Northwestern University.

He has published extensively, particularly in interdisciplinary fields, with more than 180 journal and conference papers in his active record, with a variety of co-authors and collaborators.

While he has served in many technical program committees of international conferences, and he actively reviews papers for several prestigious international journals, most notably he currently is an Associate Editor (AE) for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. He served as an AE for IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (2011-2021) and Elsevier DSP (2014-2018). He was tutorial chair for ECCV 2020. He was Doctoral Symposium Chair for IEEE ICIP 2018 (Athens). He has served as area chair for CVPR 2021, MICCAI 2018 (Granada), ICME 2018 (San Diego), ICCV 2017 (Venice), MMSP 2016 (Montreal), VCIP 2015 (Singapore). He has also co-organized workshops and tutorials for ECCV (2020, 2014), CVPR (2019), ICCV (2017), BMVC (2015), and MICCAI (2016, 2017, 2021).

He is a member of the IEEE, Senior Member, ISMRM, and SCMR.

His work has received several accolades, such as Best Paper Award (STACOM 2017), twice a Magna Cum Laude Award (ISMRM), a finalist for the Early Career Award (SCMR, 2011; SCMR, 2019 (Chartsias as PhD student)), and has had his work appear in journal covers and attract significant media coverage.

Prof. Tsaftaris is also a Murphy Fellow and a Fellow of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

• 2000 - Diploma (5 year), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Electrical and Computer Engineering
• 2003 - MSc, Northwestern University (USA), Electrical and Computer Engineering
• 2006 - PhD, Northwestern University (USA), Electrical and Computer Engineering

• MSc Level Machine Learning for Signal Processing (2018-)
• MSc Level Advanced Concepts in Signal Processing (2016-2018)
• 3rd year undergraduate, Electromagnetics, Signals and Communications 3 (2017-2019)
• 3rd year undergraduate, Signals and Communications 3 (2015-2017)

• Medical Image Computing and Analysis
• Computer Vision and Machine Learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Applications in the natural and life sciences

Dr Martin Sweatman Research Group web pages

• PhD Theoretical Physics, University of Bristol, 1995

• Statistical mechanics, classical DFT, molecular simulation, carbon capture

My work centres around the development of understanding and mathematical models for complex multiphase flow patterns to tackle various industrial problems like cleaning, oil-gas transport, slurry transport, distillation, absorption, thermal management of microdevices and biological problems such as cerebral temperature regulation and lung function.

PhD, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, 2004

• Thesis Title: Multiphase Fluid Dynamics in Structured Packing

• Member of American Association for Advancement of Science
• Member of American Physical Society
• Member of Indian Society for Surface Science Technologists
• Associate Member of IChemE

• Fluid Mechanics 4 (Chemical) CHEE10004
• Chemical Engineering Industrial Project 5 CHEE11014
• Chemical Engineering Research Project 5 CHEE11017
• Chemical Engineering Study Project 4 CHEE10009
• Chemical Engineering Design Projects 4 CHEE10002
• Chemical Engineering 1 Laboratory CHEE08001
• Chemical Engineering in Practise 3 CHEE09006

• Transport phenomena (e.g. phase change, reaction-diffusion transport)
• Multiphase (& single phase) fluid dynamics: Development of numerical (CFD/DNS) and analytical (stability theory) tools (e.g. oil-gas-solid pipeline flows, industrial cleaning and fouling)
• Biological fluid dynamics (e.g. brain temperature mapping, arterial flows, enzymatic kinetics)

• Head of Graduate School (2018 - present)
• Deputy Head of Graduate School (2016 - present)
• Acting Deputy Head of Graduate School (2015 - 2016)

https://practable.io

Prof Timothy Drysdale is the Chair of Technology Enhanced Science Education and Director of Strategic Digital Education in the School of Engineering. He is also seconded part-time to the University's Curriculum Transformation Project focusing on digital innovation for experiential learning.

His main research activity is in Engineering Education (Key Research Area 10 for the School), where he leads the Remote Laboratories group.

He and his team have developed an entirely new infrastructure and approach for operating online remote laboratories on traditional campuses (practable.io), winning international awards from the Global Online Laboratories Consortium (Remote Experiment Award 2024) and the Association for Learning Technology / Jisc Award for Digital Transformation in 2023.

Remote laboratories allow students to access real equipment, in real-time, from almost any location. The aesthetically-pleasing experiments are installed in the foyers of buildings, giving the campus a science-museum feel, with every square metre of foyer space saving 150 square metres of teaching laboratory space.

Practable.io experiments, infrastructure, and expertise are available via subscription, purchase, or consultancy through Edinburgh Innovations (contact Tim in the first instance).

Prior to 2018, he was a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the Open University, where he was the founding director and lead developer of the £3M openEngineering Laboratory, their first large-scale real-time remote laboratory, which attracted awards has attracted educational awards from the Queen's Anniversary Prize (2024), Times Higher Education (Outstanding Digital Innovation, 2017), The Guardian (Teaching Excellence, 2018), Global Online Labs Consortium (Remote Experiment Award, 2018), and National Instruments (Engineering Impact Award for Education in Europe, Middle East, Asia Region 2018, and the overall Global Award in 2019).

His discipline background is in electronics and electromagnetics, including terahertz metamaterial design, surface wave antennas for cubesats and orbital angular momentum radio links. He is Associate Editor of the IET journal Microwave Antennas and Propagation.

• PGCert Academic Practice, University of Glasgow, 2007
• PhD Passive Devices for Terahertz Frequencies, University of Canterbury (NZ) 2004
• B.Eng (First Class, University Prize) in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury (NZ) 1998

• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member IEEE

Tim's Remote Laboratories Group provides remote experiments used on engineering courses ranging from 1st-5th year and up to 450 students in size.

• Non-Traditional Practical Work
• Remote laboratories
• Electromagnetics

Teaching Matters Blog:

• https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/generative-artificial-intelligence-ban-or-embrace/
• https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/assessment-feedback-and-their-digital-futures/
• https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/its-too-risky-to-play-it-safe-with-digital-innovation/

Appearances in the School News:

• https://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/about/news/20190527/professor-tim-drysdale-wins-global-award-teaching-remote-labs
• https://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/about/news/20181120/tim-drysdale-recognised-pioneering-remote-lab-teaching

https://thangel.github.io/index.html

Athanasios is working on engineering fluid mechanics, incorporated within the Institute for Infrastructure and the Environment and leading research on hydro-environmental applications. Aside from the role of lecturer in Civil Engineering hydraulics, as an Industrial Innovation Research Fellow of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) he coordinates research activities on computational methods for marine and offshore renewable energy, working closely with industry and other research groups.

• PhD in Hydro-environmental engineering (2014). Hydro-environmental Research Centre, Cardiff University.
• MEng in Civil Engineering (2010). School of Engineering, Cardiff University.

• CIVE10006 Hydraulic Engineering 4, University of Edinburgh (2019 - Now) - Course Organiser and Lecturer
• CIVE09035 Water Engineering Transport and Treatment 3, University of Edinburgh (2020-Now) - Course Organiser and Lecturer

• Environmental fluid mechanics
• Coastal ocean modelling
• Computational fluid dynamics
• Marine renewable energy
• Fluorescence spectroscopy

I am a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. I am a computational engineering scientist exploring nanoscale interfacial phenomena using simulation, with a particular focus on phase change, droplet dynamics, and heat transfer at solid–liquid interfaces.  My research combines molecular dynamics (including machine-learning interatomic potentials) with continuum modelling and multiscale coupling methods to connect atomistic physics to engineering-scale behaviour. A recurring theme is understanding how nanoscale mechanisms govern macroscopic outcomes: how droplets move (and sometimes jump), how surfaces clean themselves, how ice nucleates, and how heat is transported across interfaces.  

I lead an £1.3M UKRI/ERC-funded research grant (NANO-COOL) investigating nanoscale mechanisms of phase change and their implications for thermal control, and I am a group leader within the multiscale flow (mfX) research group (with Duncan and Livio), where we develop multiscale methods and high-performance computing software for complex flow and transport problems.

I am actively involved in academic service and research leadership within the School and the wider University. I currently serve as Postdoctoral Researcher (PDRA) Champion for the School of Engineering, a role focused on improving postdoctoral support, career development, and research culture. In this capacity, I have contributed to the design and implementation of postdoctoral induction and professional development initiatives aligned with the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.

PhD, University of Melbourne (2017)

MSc, University of California, Davis (2012)

• College Member, EPSRC Peer Review College (2024–present)
• Expert Evaluator, European Research Council (2024–present)
• Member, Scotland Beyond Net Zero (2025–present)
• Member, UK Fluids Network Special Interest Group on Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics (NEMD) (2019–present)
• Member, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) (2014–present)

My research sits at the interface of molecular simulation, multiscale modelling, and thermal-fluid engineering, including:

• Molecular dynamics of phase change and interfacial transport, including ML potentials for more accurate/transferable simulations  
• Boiling/evaporation and vapour bubble nucleation at nanoscale surfaces; wettability/roughness effects.
• Ice nucleation and design principles for icephobic / de-icing surfaces, including vibration effects  
• Spectral / mode-resolved mechanisms of heat transfer across solid–liquid interfaces (including meniscus physics)  
• Multiscale coupling (atomistic ↔ continuum) and HPC-enabled simulation workflows (ARCHER2/CIRRUS)  

Selected public coverage:

• Self-cleaning surfaces inspired by cicadas (The Conversation)  
• Nanobubbles for ultrasonic cleaning (EurekAlert)  
• Ultra-fast vibration heating / “boiling by shaking” (BBC, press clippings: 1, 2, 3, 4)  

Further information on my research and publications can be found on mypersonal website, as well as the mfX group website.

Working with me / joining the group.I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and visitors who are excited by multiscale simulation and want to work across molecular dynamics, continuum modelling, and HPC. If you contact me, the most helpful first email includes (i) a short CV, (ii) a paragraph on your interests and relevant technical skills (e.g., MD/CFD/programming), and (iii) a note on funding status/timelines. See group website on details on existing opportunities.

Collaboration.I’m always happy to discuss collaborations that need careful physics at interfaces (phase change, nucleation, interfacial heat transfer) and/or robust simulation workflows. For broader group work and joint opportunities, mfX is a good entry point