About the NSC
Accelerating the Energy Transition Through Smart Technologies Applied to Industrial Challenges
The NSC is harnessing the university’s academic expertise, research capability and facilities to establish a world-class research and development centre. The NSC aims to develop smart digital and engineering technologies to enable a faster, more cost-effective and sustainable transition to a net zero energy basin, locally in the North Sea and globally in energy environments.
The spacious, state-of-the-art centre is designed to make sure team members and visitors alike have everything they need to help maximise their skills in all fields of work. Facilities at the NSC are a national resource and an important aspect of its unique place in the UK research infrastructure. Facilities include a spacious warehouse, large yard space, innovation hub, conference room and an open plan breakout area.
Research Programmes
At present, the NSC is focused on four core research programmes:
Transparent Ocean
The Transparent Ocean programme aims to develop cutting-edge capability to detect, monitor and understand subsea and marine activities, including condition of supporting infrastructures and surrounding environments, using the full range of state-of-the-art platforms and sources for data acquisition, visualisation, analysis, interpretation and prediction. The Transparent Ocean research programme is led by Professor Jinchang Ren.
Integrated Energy
The Integrated Energy programme aims to develop cutting edge capability to design, model, evaluate and construct an integrated marine energy grid to support the transition to decarbonised energy, using smart materials, digital twins, robotics and mixed energy vector power systems. The Integrated Energy research programme is led by Professor James Njuguna.
Net Zero Operations
The Net Zero Operations programme aims to develop leading edge capability to reduce carbon emissions, resource consumption and environmental footprint of marine industry operations using digital twins, machine learning and optimisation for operations planning and management, workforce transition planning and supply chain redesign. The Net Zero Operations research programme is led by Dr. Ciprian Zavoianu.
Cyber-Physical System
The Cyber-Physical System programme aims to develop cutting edge capability to maintain and protect equipment, assets and infrastructures of marine industry through the convergence of operational and information technologies by seamless integration of physical components with modern computation, control and automation algorithms. The Cyber-Physical Systems research programme is led by Dr. Andrei Petrovski.
These ambitious and innovative programmes are delivered through interdisciplinary research projects which address complex industry challenges and are periodically reviewed and adapted to ensure continued relevance to emerging technical developments and industrial needs.
Collaborative Working
Team members work collaboratively to find innovative solutions to industry challenges in an environment where positive disruptive thinking is encouraged. All research undertaken at the NSC is driven by leaders with expertise spanning the fields of data science and AI, optimisation and machine learning, digital twins and simulation, machine vision and remote sensing, techno-economic modelling, smart materials and manufacturing, robotics, renewable energy systems and decarbonisation, marine ecosystems and sustainable environment modelling.
This work is only made possible with the support of the NSC’s dedicated Operations teams which include Administration, Marketing & Communications and Business Development.