Contact Dr Mahmood Shafiee

Areas of expertise

Background

Dr Mahmood Shafiee (PhD, CEng, MIMechE, MIAM, MIMA, MORS, FHEA, PGCAP) is a specialist in the area of Reliability and Maintenance Engineering with more than fifteen years’ experience of research and consultancy in the fields of Reliability Assessment, Prognostic Maintenance, Risk Analysis, Predictive Analytics, and Uncertainty Quantification within a wide range of industry sectors; including energy, transport, manufacturing, automation, healthcare, water, and finance.

Dr Shafiee has been the MSc Course Director and Academic Lead in Reliability and Maintenance Engineering at Cranfield University since 2013. Prior to joining Cranfield University, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of Maintenance Optimisation at the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Energy & Environment, Chalmers University, Sweden, where he undertook research on two multi-disciplinary projects about developing predictive maintenance optimisation tools for the intelligent asset management of offshore wind farms and railway infrastructure and rolling stocks. Prior to that, he was a visiting researcher at several European and American universities.

During his academic career, Dr Shafiee has been the Director of a number of BSc and MSc Programmes (including: Risk Management, Maintenance Engineering, Renewable Energy Engineering, Business Analytics, and Supply Chain Management) as well as the leader of several MSc Courses, including Risk and Reliability, Advanced Inspection and Maintenance, and Engineering Asset Management.

Dr Shafiee has been awarded several honours and educational scholarships at the national and international levels. He has twice been awarded Student Led Teaching Awards in 2014 as the Most Interactive Lecturer and in 2015 for the Best Lecture. He was also nominated in 2016 and 2017 as the Best Research Supervisor in the school.

Dr Shafiee has managed several successful bespoke training programmes for other universities and industries. He is currently the Course Director for the MSc on Plant Reliability and Maintainability at the University of Sheffield. He holds several training qualifications from awarding bodies such as The Higher Education Academy (HEA) of the UK.

Dr Shafiee has authored more than 90 scientific papers in top-ranking journals and in major conference proceedings. The total number of his citations in scientific databases exceeds 850, and he has the h-index of 17 and i10-index of 21. His papers have won the best paper award in the years 2011, 2015 and 2016.

Dr Shafiee has supervised 2 Research Associate, 13 PhD theses, 6 MSc group projects, as well as over 40 MSc thesis projects through to completion.

Dr Shafiee has been a plenary speaker and programme committee member of over 30 international conferences. He sits as committee Chair in the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA) and is a Committee Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). He is also an active member of professional societies, consortia, and volunteer organisations such as the Institute of Asset Management, Institute of Mathematics and Application, Operational Research Society, Industrial Engineering and Operations Management and the UK’s Higher Education Academy. He presently serves as an Associated Editor and/or a member of the Editorial Board in several international journals.

Current activities

Dr Shafiee's research interests include: Reliability Engineering, Risk Analysis, Advanced Inspection & Autonomous Maintenance, Engineering Asset Management, Product Life-cycle Management (PLM), Remote Condition Monitoring (RCM), Life Prediction & Extension, Digital Assets and Data Analytics, Diagnostics, Prognostics and Predictive Maintenance, Warranty and Extended Warranty, Decision-making under Uncertainty, and Big Data in Risk Management.

Dr Shafiee has managed and led - as either PI or Co-PI - several research projects, including:

- Risk-based Inspection and Maintenance Planning of Offshore Wind Farms (funded by EPSRC SUPERGEN Wind Hub 2018-9); 

- Analysing the Reliability of Condition Monitoring Technologies for Offshore Wind Foundations under Uncertainty (funded by EPSRC Doctoral 2017-21);

- Optimising the Reliability and Maintenance of New Railway Tracks (funded by EPSRC, Network Rail, DfT and RSSB 2015-7);

- Quantifying the Added-Value of Condition Monitoring for Offshore Wind Foundations (funded by Carbon Trust and nine offshore wind developers including: DONG (Ørsted); E.ON; Mainstream Renewable Power; RWE Innog; Iberdrola; SSE Renewables; Statkraft; Statoil and Vattenfall 2016-7);

- Developing Data-driven Predictive Maintenance algorithms for ATM Network Infrastructure (funded by Santander UK 2016-7);

- Big Data Analytics in Oil and Gas Industry (funded by the Petroleum Engineering Company 2016);

- Optimisation of Structural Health Monitoring Systems for Offshore Wind Farms (funded by EPSRC REMS 2015-19);

- Risk-based Maintenance Optimisation of Train Coaches (2015-2017);

- Designing Decision Support Systems for the Optimal Maintenance of Wind Power Plants (funded by Energimyndigheten 2012-3);

- Degradation of Rails and Wheels (funded by Trafikverket 2012-3).

Dr Shafiee’s research papers have been published in high impact factor journals; such as Renewable Energy, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment,   Expert Systems with Applications,  European Journal of Operational Research,  Reliability Engineering and System Safety,  IEEE Transactions on Reliability,  Energies, The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology,  Ocean Engineering, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries,  Proceedings of the IMechE, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit,  Proceedings of the IMechE, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability.

Dr Shafiee presents his research findings at conferences organised by the IEEE, European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA), European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), Institute of Asset Management (IAM), RenewableUK, Operational Research Society (ORS) and, regularly publishes in conference proceedings including: European Safety and Reliability (ESREL), Mathematical Methods in Reliability (MMR), Modelling in Industrial Maintenance & Reliability (MIMAR), WindEurope Conference, IEEE PES Powertech, IEEE Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), The Asset Management Conference, and Condition Monitoring and Diagnostic Engineering Management (COMADEM).

Clients

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Innovate UK

Rail Safety and Standard Board (RSSB)

Network Rail

British Steel

Renewable UK

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Santander Bank / Produban UK

Carbon Trust

Rail Research UK Association (RRUKA)

Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten)

Swedish Railway Administration (Trafikverket)

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Makita Electric Company

Petroleum Engineering and Development Company

Publications

Articles In Journals

Conference Papers

Books