Rate My Professor Ali Mehmanparast

Ali Mehmanparast (PhD, MBA, CEng, CMgr) is a Professor of Offshore Renewable Energy Structures in the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He obtained his MEng in 2008 and PhD in 2012 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, and completed an MBA at Cranfield University between 2018 and 2019. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. Before joining the University of Strathclyde in 2022, Mehmanparast held successive academic appointments at Imperial College London and Cranfield University from 2012 to 2021, advancing from Research Associate to Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader. His professional qualifications include Chartered Engineer status with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Chartered Manager status with the Chartered Management Institute.

Mehmanparast's research focuses on design optimisation, life extension, and integrity assessment of offshore renewable energy structures, integrating advanced computational modelling, experimental characterisation, manufacturing process innovations, and probabilistic analysis techniques. His expertise encompasses offshore wind and tidal energy systems, fatigue and fracture mechanics, additive manufacturing, corrosion-fatigue interactions, and structural life cycle assessment, contributing to sustainable development goals in affordable clean energy and resilient infrastructure. He has co-led prominent initiatives including the £7.5M EPSRC-funded Co-Tide Programme Grant for scalable tidal stream energy and the £3M industry/DECC-funded SLIC Joint Industry Project on offshore wind structural lifecycles. As Co-Investigator and Manager of the £4M Cranfield-Oxford-Strathclyde REMS Centre for Doctoral Training (2014–2022) and Co-Investigator on the £6.7M Strathclyde-Oxford-Edinburgh WAMSS Centre for Doctoral Training (2019–2027), he has supervised and trained over 120 PhD and EngD specialists for the offshore renewable energy sector. With a portfolio exceeding 140 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters, notable publications include 'Current trend in offshore wind energy sector and material requirements for fatigue resistance improvement in large wind turbine support structures – A review' (Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2019), 'Analysis of fracture toughness properties of wire + arc additive manufactured high strength low alloy structural steel components' (Materials Science and Engineering: A, 2019), and 'Fatigue crack growth rates for offshore wind monopile weldments in air and seawater: SLIC inter-laboratory test results' (Materials & Design, 2017). He serves as Energy Engineering Subject Editor for the International Journal of Engineering Failure Analysis and holds editorial board positions on Applied Ocean Research, Forces in Mechanics, Materials at High Temperatures, Journal of Multiscale Modelling, and Wind. Additionally, he is a member of the UK Forum for Engineering Structural Integrity (FESI) Council.