Researcher seeks to predict and optimize complex engineering systems under extreme uncertainty
Creating anything new requires testing the limits of what already exists and delving into uncertainty. This is what Themistoklis Sapsis does regularly. "My work is on systems for which we understand as much as we don't understand," the assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Stochastic Analysis and Nonlinear Dynamics Lab says. By using analytical and computational methods, Sapsis tries to predict and optimize behavior, particularly when the dynamics and excitations are uncertain and occasionally extreme. This places much of his work in the ocean environment, and whether it's an energy-harvesting configuration or an ocean structure, his goal is to create designs that maintain operational robustness and safety regardless of the constantly varying conditions.