Webinar: Ocean Wave Energy in Australia

Name: Professor Irene Penesis
Affiliation: Research Director, Blue Economy CRC

Professor Irene Penesis is the Research Director for the Blue Economy CRC.

Irene was the bid leader responsible for developing the successful application to the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program. Irene’s passion for a transition to renewable energy, environmental sustainability and decarbonisation of marine and maritime industries led her to developing the successful application to the Commonwealth’s CRC program. Irene is on secondment from the Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania where she led a multi-disciplinary research team working in the field of marine renewable energy and contributing to educating maritime engineering students in the Centre for Maritime Engineering and Hydrodynamics.

Irene is the Australian Primary Delegate of the International Energy Agency’s Ocean Energy Systems (OES), and on the Steering Committees of the Tasmanian Government’s Renewable Energy Action Plan, the Marine Energy Research Australia (MERA) at the University of Western Australia and MERIC Chile’s Scientific International Committee.

Irene was the Chair of Marine Renewable Energy Specialist Committee of the International Towing Tank Conference (ITTC) between 2011 and 2017, a peak international body developing technical guidelines and procedures relevant to the hydrodynamic testing of wave energy converters, marine current/tidal turbines and offshore wind turbines.

Name: Dr Hugh Wolgamot
Affiliation: Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Hugh Wolgamot works on offshore hydrodynamics and wave-structure interaction problems, with application to offshore renewable energy (wave and floating wind).

He has been working on wave energy since commencing his doctorate, received from the University of Oxford in 2014. Since that time he has been part of the Shell Chair program at the University of Western Australia. Hugh was an ARC DECRA fellow 2020-2023 and co-leads the M4 project on behalf of UWA’s Marine Energy Research Australia in Albany, WA, jointly funded by UWA, the BE CRC and the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

Name: Dr Adi Kurniawan
Affiliation: Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Adi Kurniawan is a research fellow with the Marine Energy Research Australia (MERA), The University of Western Australia (UWA). His research covers aspects of wave energy conversion, wave-structure interactions, and multi-objective optimisation. He has numerically modelled a variety of wave energy converters (WECs)and is deeply interested in how geometry and motion influence wave absorption.

Adi obtained his PhD in Marine Technology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Before joining UWA, he worked at Aalborg University, Denmark, and the University of Plymouth, UK. Adi is the co-author of Ocean Waves and Oscillating Systems: Linear Interactions Including Wave-Energy Extraction (2nd edition).

He is a member of the Standards Australia Committee EL-066 on Marine energy – Wave, tidal and other water current converters, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Off shore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.

Name: Dr Jana Orszaghova
Affiliation: Deputy Program Leader – BE CRC | Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia

Jana Orszaghova is a Deputy Program Leader for the Offshore Renewable Energy Systems in the Blue Economy CRC. She works as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia focusing on ocean renewable energy; applying analytical, numerical and experimental skills to solve challenging problems in the field of hydrodynamics. Her work aims to advance fundamental understanding of wave-structure interactions, and to contribute towards safer, more reliable and more economical marine energy systems.

Jana obtained her PhD in ocean and coastal engineering at University of Oxford, UK, and her BSc and MSc degrees were in mathematics. Following her PhD, she spent four years working in industry before returning to academia.

Her current research interests are non-linear excitation mechanisms of wave energy converters and offshore wind turbines, including second-order slow-drift effects, parametric excitation and higher-order sum-frequency loads. Jana works closely with the marine energy industry, and remains active in topics of coastal runup and wavemaker theories stemming from her PhD.

Name: Dr Peter Osman
Affiliation: Electrical Engineer and Biophysicist, CSIRO Energy

Peter Osman is an electrical engineer and biophysicist with fifty-two years’ experience as an engineer, scientist, and manager. His work includes the design and implementation of large-scale or nanoscale control and data acquisition systems, analysis of the data they produce and technical reviews. His work has often been governed by stringent legal and safety requirements and usually involves managing or working in multi-disciplinary teams.

While coordinating projects for developing countries, Peter realised how seriously climate change would impact the developing world and the urgent need to cope with its impacts.

Over the last twenty years, the focus of his work has shifted from medical device and aerospace instrumentation to projects assessing building energy efficiency, carbon mitigation or the feasibility of ocean renewable energy in an Australian context.

Name: Dr Nataliia Sergiienko
Affiliation: Senior Lecturer·University of Adelaide

Dr Nataliia Sergiienko is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Nataliia received her Bachelor and Master degree in Aerospace engineering from the National Technical University of Ukraine, in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

Between 2007 and 2012, Nataliia worked as a Modelling, Simulation and Analysis Engineer for the US-based company Innalabs Ltd developing high-precision inertial navigation and orientation systems for aerospace and marine applications. In 2018, Nataliia received her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Nataliia’s current research focus is on wave energy converters and floating offshore wind platforms. Since 2023, Dr Sergiienko is an Australia Research Council Industry Fellow working on deployment-ready control systems for the wave energy industry.

Name: Dr Wiebke Ebeling
Affiliation: Research Fellow, The University Of Western Australia

Wiebke has a background in the biological sciences and in career development. She has worked in research, education, community outreach, and science communication at several Australian universities for 15+ years. Since 2018, she has been the Centre Manager of Marine Energy Research Australia (MERA; formerly Wave Energy Research Centre), and she established the MERA headquarters at the Great Southern Marine Research Facility, part of the UWA regional campus in Albany.

Wiebke is a Board Director at the Southern Ports Authority, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the Hub Leader of the Western Australian United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development, the Australian representative in the International Wave & Tidal Energy Research Sites group, and the previous Chair of the Great Southern Science Council. She co-leads MERA’s M4 Wave Energy Demonstration Project with a particular focus on WA Government liaison, community engagement, and Social Licence.

Name: Dr Rowan Trebilco
Affiliation: Team Leader, CSIRO

Rowan leads the Ecosystem Modelling & Assessment team in the Sustainable Marine Futures Program at CSIRO Environment in Hobart. His diverse research interests centre around disentangling what drives ecosystem structure and function and engaging at the interface between science, decision-making and environmental stewardship.

The main focus of his current work is on assessing status, trends, risks and opportunities for marine social-ecological systems and on developing strategies for climate change adaptation.

He has worked in Australia, Europe and America across theoretical ecosystem ecology, statistical and mechanistic modelling, fisheries and natural resource management, and applications of biochemical tracers to quantify trophic linkages, including several years of fieldwork above and below temperate, tropical, and Southern oceans.

Name: Dr Philip Marsh
Affiliation: Lead Modeller, Australian Maritime College

Dr Philip Marsh is currently involved as lead modeller in the Marine Spatial Planning for a Blue Economy project , where he is conducting spatial and temporal assessments to characterise Australia’s ocean renewable energy resources for blue economy applications.

His previous roles include wind and tidal, multicriteria and computational fluid dynamics modelling across wind, ocean energy and defence sectors. He is a member of the Australian Marine Energy Standards Mirror Committee to the International Electrotechnical Commission on Marine Energy Standards (IEC-TC114): EL-066: Marine Energy – wave, tidal and other water current convertors, and also contributes to the Ocean Energy Systems (OES)Tidal Energy working group.

Name: Dr Hugh Breakey
Affiliation: Deputy Director of Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University

Dr Hugh Breakey is Deputy Director of Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. His research in moral philosophy explores the ethical challenges in many diverse fields, including professional ethics, ethical decision-making, peacekeeping, argument, institutional governance, climate change, sustainable tourism, private property and intellectual property, human rights, and international law.

Name: Pethie Lyons
Affiliation: Human Geographer, CSIRO

Peci Lyons (Pethie) is a human geographer keenly engaged in research to understand the mechanisms that enable equitable decision-making for social-ecological sustainability. Her research explores how technology, decision processes and practices, and Western, local and Indigenous knowledge systems can combine to create alternative pathways to improve sustainability and societal well-being. She has a keen research interest in co-design and Indigenous-led methodological approaches. She has led and conducted research on climate response and adaptation planning as well as collaborative and risk governance.