Antonis Vakis appointed as Full Professor

We are proud to announce that Dr. Antonis Vakis has been promoted to Full Professor by the Board of the University of Groningen. We warmly congratulate him on this well-deserved recognition of his scientific leadership, educational commitment, and valuable contributions to the university community.

Antonis Vakis
Antonis I. Vakis was born in Cyprus and did all his studies in mechanical engineering starting with a Diploma of Technician Engineer at the Higher Technical Institute (HTI) in Cyprus (2000) before moving to the US to earn a Bachelor from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (2005), and a Master and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008 and 2011). He joined the University of Groningen as Assistant Professor in 2013 and is Chair of Computational Mechanical and Materials Engineering. His research profile can be best characterized as computational mechanical engineering with research lines in wave energy, energy storage and computational mechanics. Specifically, his group is active in the technology develoment and modeling of hybrid energy systems comprising wave energy converter arrays and novel underwater pumped hydro-storage technologies. The latter is tied to the commercialization activities of the spin-off company Ocean Grazer BV he co-founded and in which he serves as scientific advisor. In the effort to accelerate technology development, his group essentially develops digital twins for hybrid devices and hybrid energy systems, e.g. wave and offshore wind generation co-located with energy storage, to predict their performance and metrics such as the levelized cost of energy. Furthermore, his group works in the modeling of fluid flows for industrial and biomechanical applications, while he previously worked extensively on contact mechanics and tribology. Antonis Vakis coordinates, teaches and participates in courses on the Dynamics of Engineering Systems, Multiscale Contact Mechanics and Tribology, and Renewable Energy Technologies. He serves as Programme Director of the MSc programme in Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) and is an Academic Fellow of the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute (CMMI). He also represents the University of Groningen in the Netherlands Mechanical Engineering Council (Raad voor de Werktuigbouwkunde).