Contact Dr Mahmood Shafiee

Areas of expertise

Background

Dr Mahmood Shafiee (PhD, CEng, FIMechE, MIET, MIAM, MIMA, MORS, FHEA, PGCAP) is Director of MSc Programme in “Renewable Energy” and the Leader of Research Group in “Risk, Reliability & Maintenance Engineering” at the Department of Energy and Power, Cranfield University - a prestige UK University which was ranked #45 in “Engineering - Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing” by QS World University Rankings in 2018. 

Dr Shafiee has more than fifteen years’ experience of research and consultancy in the fields of Smart Maintenance, Asset Reliability, Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), Risk Analysis, Life Prediction & Extension; Predictive Maintenance; and Uncertainty Quantification, within a range of industry sectors; including Offshore Renewables (Wind, Wave, Tidal), Oil and Gas, Transport (Rail and Shipping) and Manufacturing.

Prior to joining Cranfield University, he worked as a researcher at several European, American and Asian Universities. He was part of the research team of three International projects on "Warranty Analysis of Second-hand Mechanical Systems" ; “Accelerated Life Testing, Prediction and Extension of Offshore Energy Structures” and “Condition Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis of Wind Turbines” which were funded with government grants of $90K, $54K and CAN 36K, respectively. In his last position (before Cranfield) he worked at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, as the work package leader of a Swedish-European project called "Decision Support Systems for Maintenance of Wind Power Plants". This project was funded with a grant of nearly SEK 4,02M by Chalmers area of Advance in "Energy" and supported by several Swedish/Danish organisations and industries such as: Siemens, REPower, Vestas, Vattenfall, Energimyndegheten, Vindforsk – Elforsk, Göteborg Energi, etc. 

During his academic career, Dr Shafiee has been the Director of a number of MSc Programmes, including: Offshore and Ocean Technology; Mechanical Engineering; and Renewable Energy. He also has been the leader of MSc courses in “Risk and Reliability Engineering” and “Advanced Maintenance Engineering and Asset Management”. In total, these courses and short courses have been attended by more than 1,000 MSc students and delegates from industry. Based on the feedback from delegates, Dr Shafiee was 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 in the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 as the Best Research Supervisor at the School.

The number of Mahmood’s scientific and applicative publications has considerably grown in recent years. Up to now, he has authored more than 100 scientific papers in top-ranking journals as well as major conference proceedings, many of which to be included in the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Three of his papers also have won the “Best Paper Award” in the years 2011, 2015 and 2016. The total number of his citations in scientific databases exceeds 1100, and he has the h-index of 18 and i10-index of 25. He has managed and led (as either PI or Co-PI) several research projects on “stochastic methods and tools to support real-time planning of risk-based inspection for offshore wind structures” (with the universities of Strathclyde and Aalborg); "UAVs for offshore wind farms" (with three drone companies); “designing steel composition and microstructure to better resist degradation during wheel rail contact” (with the universities of Cambridge, Huddersfield and Leads), “added-value of condition monitoring for offshore wind” (with nine offshore wind companies); “optimisation of structural health monitoring for offshore wind structures (with Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult); “reliability of condition monitoring technologies for offshore wind foundations under uncertainty (with EPSRC); “decision support systems for maintenance of wind power plants" (EU FP7; Energimyndigheten)”; “predictive maintenance tool for network infrastructure” (with Santander UK); “reliability engineering in oil and gas industry” (with NAFTA), etc.

Besides project management, Dr Shafiee has also been running several bespoke courses and workshops for several industries, such as United Utilities, BAE Systems, Babcock, Network Rail, Subsea UK, etc. He is currently the Director of an MSc course in "Plant Reliability and Maintainability" and a visiting academic at the University of Sheffield (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cbe/shortcourses/2.3866/plant-reliability). He holds several training qualifications from awarding bodies such as The Higher Education Academy (HEA) of the UK.

Dr Shafiee has line managed and supervised 1 Research Fellow, 3 Research Assistants, 14 PhD theses, 6 MSc group projects, as well as more than 50 MSc thesis projects through to completion.

Dr Shafiee is a plenary speaker and programme committee member of over 40 international conferences. He sits as the chair of Energy Committee at the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA) and also is a Committee Member of the Upstream Oil and Gas Committee at 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 has expertise in the following area: Smart Maintenance; Digital Inspection; Structural Reliability; Probabilistic Risk Assessment; Engineering Asset Management (BSI PAS 55); Prognostics and Predictive Maintenance; Product Life-cycle Management (PLM), Remote Condition Monitoring (RCM), Risk-based Inspection (RBI); Life Prediction & Extension; Predictive Analytics; 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:

- Stochastic Methods and Tools to Support 'Real-Time' Planning of Risk-based Inspection for Offshore Wind Structures (funded by EPSRC SUPERGEN Wind Hub 2018-9); http://supergenwind-r4.com

- Reliability of Condition Monitoring Technologies for Offshore Wind Foundations under Uncertainty (funded by EPSRC 2017-21); https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1955975

- Designing Steel Composition and Microstructure to Better Resist Degradation during Wheel Rail Contact  (funded by EPSRC, Network Rail, DfT and RSSB 2015-7); https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP/M022978/1

- Quantifying the Added-Value of Condition Monitoring for Offshore Wind Foundations (funded by 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 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 2015-19);

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

- Designing Decision Support Systems for the Optimal Maintenance of Wind Power Plants (funded by Energimyndigheten EU FP7 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

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