Major Initiatives

The Fugro Chair in Geotechnics, created in 2014, enables the collaboration of Fugro and UWA on highly innovative research projects – providing solutions, relevant to industry needs within the field of offshore geotechnics. The partnership enhances COFS active research group with a focus on engineering design and performance to reduce risk across the offshore sector.

For more info contact Prof. Fraser Bransby, Fugro Chair in Geotechnics.

A partnership formed in 2013, Shell Australia and UWA established the Shell Chair in Offshore Engineering to strengthen Western Australia’s position as a global offshore engineering hub. The partnership’s strengths encompass pure and applied research from the seabed to sea surface processes to develop technologies that can be directly transferred into real-world applications in Offshore Engineering.

For more info contact Prof. Phil Watson, Shell Chair in Offshore Engineering.

The ARC Industrial Transformational Research Hub for Transforming energy Infrastructure through Digital Engineering (TIDE) is developing new science and technology through digital engineering, to optimise the management of offshore energy infrastructure. Established in 2021 through funding provided by the Australian Research Council, a number of major industry partners, UWA, and the University of Wollongong – TIDE combines expertise in mathematics, statistics and machine learning with world-leading research in oceanography, hydrodynamics and geotechnics to better understand offshore energy environments and improve future infrastructure design.

For more info contact Prof. Phil Watson, TIDE Director.

Marine Energy Research Australia (MERA) is a UWA research centre funded by the WA State Government and the Blue Economy Collaborative Research Centre that undertakes transdisciplinary research to accelerate the development of offshore renewable energy, including offshore wind, wave and tidal energy.

It collaborates with Australian and international industry partners, academic researchers and governments to undertake both fundamental research and to support deployment and commercialisation of offshore renewable energy.

For more info contact Prof. Christophe Gaudin, MERA Director, or Dr Wiebke Ebeling, MERA Centre Manager.