Dr Mahmood Shafiee

Areas of expertise

• Energy Asset Management
• Instrumentation, Sensors and Measurement Science
• Oil and Gas
• Operational Analysis and Simulation
• Renewable Energy
• Safety, Resilience, Risk & Reliability
• Systems Engineering
• Throughlife Engineering Services

Background

Dr Mahmood Shafiee is Director of Master’s Program in “Renewable Energy” ; Director of Research Group and Associate Professor in “Risk and Reliability Engineering” ; and Manager of “Inspection & Maintenance Laboratory" at Cranfield University – a prestige UK University which was ranked 39^th in the world in “Engineering - Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing” by the QS World University Rankings (2018) [https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/engineering-mechanical]

Dr Shafiee has more than fifteen years’ experience of research and consultancy in the following fields, and within a range of industry sectors including: Offshore Oil and Gas; Onshore/Offshore Renewables (bottom-fixed and floating Wind Power, Concentrating Solar Power, Wave and Tidal); Transport (Rail, Road and Shipping); Manufacturing; etc.  

- Reliability-based Design of Mechanical Systems and Civil Structures;

- Inspection and Maintenance of Degrading Assets;

- Diagnosis and Prognostics of Safety-Critical Components using Artificial Intelligence (AI); 

- Multi-Hazard Risk / Resilience Analysis of Interdependent Infrastructures;

- Sensing, Condition Monitoring and Structural Health Assessment;

- Probabilistic Life Assessment and Decommissioning / Life-Extension Support Systems;

- Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E) of Engineering Structures;

- Robotics and Autonomous Systems (AUV, UAV, ROV, Drone) ;

- Uncertainty Quantification in Condition-based Maintenance.

During his academic career, Dr Shafiee has been Director of a number of MSc Programs, including: "Offshore and Ocean Technology"; "Mechanical Engineering"; and "Renewable Energy Engineering". He also has been the leader of two following courses at the Master’s level: 

– “Risk and Reliability Engineering”

[https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/courses/short/energy-and-power/risk-and-reliability-engineering]

– “Advanced Maintenance Engineering and Asset Management”

[https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/courses/short/energy-and-power/advanced-maintenance-engineering-and-asset-management] 

In total, these courses have been attended by more than 1,200 postgraduate students from across the University as well as delegates from industry. Based on the feedback from students, Dr Shafiee has been awarded twice the Student Led Teaching Award (SLTA), once in 2014 as the Most Interactive Lecturer and another time in 2015 as the Best Lecture. He also was nominated as the Best Research Supervisor in the years 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Dr Shafiee has a very strong track record in publishing in many of the top peer-reviewed journals. Up to 2019, he has authored 1 book and 7 invited book chapters, received 3 patents and published over 120 journal papers and conference articles. The total number of his citations in scientific databases exceeds 1500, and he has the h-index of 20 and i10-index of 29. 

He has been part of several national and international projects funded by research councils, innovation bodies, government, etc. about designing and developing integrated through-life asset management solutions for complex mechanical engineering systems and civil infrastructure. He was the work package manager of a Swedish project entitled “Decision Support Systems for the Optimal Maintenance of Wind Power Plants” which was led by Chalmers University of Technology and supported by several energy industries such as: Siemens Gamesa, REPower, Vestas, Vattenfall, Energimyndegheten, Vindforsk – Elforsk, Göteborg Energi, etc. . He was Co-I of an EPSRC-RSSB funded project about “Rolling Contact Fatigue (RCF) of Rails and Wheels”. He also undertook research as part of an NSERC-funded project focused on developing and validating tools for accelerated life testing, prediction and extension of marine assets. He was the PI of an EPSRC SuperGen Hub project aiming to develop stochastic methods for ‘real-time’ planning of inspection and maintenance activities in wind farms. Furthermore, He has been leading several Joint Industry Projects (JIPs) on "Risk-based Maintenance of Railway Rolling Stock"  ; "Using UAVs for Offshore Wind Farm O&M" ; “Life Extension of Safety Critical Elements (SCEs)", “Quantification of the Benefits of Condition Monitoring Technologies”, etc. 

Besides project management, Dr Shafiee also runs several bespoke courses and workshops for several industries, such as Siemens Gamesa, Vattenfall, E.ON, United Utilities, BAE Systems, Network Rail, etc. He is also a visiting academic and the director of an MSc course in "Plant Reliability and Maintainability" at the University of Sheffield [https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cbe/postgraduate/taught-courses/short-courses-industry]. He holds several training qualifications from awarding bodies such as The Higher Education Academy (HEA) of the UK.

Dr Shafiee has been principle supervisor of 13 PhD students (five of whom have graduated); 8 MSc group projects, and over 70 MSc thesis projects. He has been plenary speaker or programme committee member of over 50 international conferences in the UK, USA, Canada, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, China, South Africa, etc. He sits on the Energy Committee in the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA) and is a Committee Member of the Offshore and Upstream Engineering Division at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). He is also an active member of professional societies, consortia, and volunteer organisations such as the RenewableUK, EERA JP Wind, Institute of Asset Management (IAM), Institute of Mathematics and Application (IMA), Operational Research Society (ORS), Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) and the UK’s Higher Education Academy (HEA). 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 papers have been published in high impact factor journals; such as IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (IF: 7.05) ; Renewable Energy (IF: 4.900)  ; The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment (IF: 4.195)  ; Reliability Engineering and System Safety (IF: 4.139) ;  Expert Systems with Applications (IF: 3.768)  ;  European Journal of Operational Research (IF: 3.428)  ; Computers and Chemical Engineering (IF: 3.113) ;  IEEE Transactions on Reliability (IF: 2.729)  ;  Energies (IF: 2.676)  ;  The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology (IF: 2.601) ;  Marine Structures (IF: 2.491) ;  Sensors (IF: 2.475)  ; Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering (IF: 2.382)  ;  Ocean Engineering (IF: 2.214) ; Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries (IF: 1.982)  ;  Applied Sciences (IF: 1.689) ;  Flow Measurement and Instrumentation (IF: 1.407) ;  Proceedings of the IMechE, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability (IF: 1.373) ; Proceedings of the IMechE, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit (IF: 1.103) ; Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology (IF: 0.925) ; etc. 

Dr Shafiee presents his research findings at conferences organised by the IEEE, European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA), WindEurope, 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

SupergenWind Hub

Vestas

Vattenfall

Ørsted

Rail Safety and Standard Board (RSSB)

Network Rail

British Steel

Renewable UK

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Santander 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