Assistant, Associate or Full Professor, Ship Hydrodynamics

Assistant, Associate or Full Professor in Ship Hydrodynamics (Tenure Track)

Aalto University Department of Energy and Mechanical Engineering is a community of around 300 staff members – including 30 tenure track professors – assembled to research, teach, create, and develop solutions for society's needs. Key research areas include marine and arctic technology; energy technologies and systems; mechanical systems and mechatronics; and materials, manufacturing, and product development. We have strong links to industry, creating lasting impact in both business and society.

Are you a passionate developer of the new era for ship hydrodynamics?

We are now looking for a professor to lead ship hydrodynamics field at Aalto University's Marine and Arctic Technology group. In this position you will have a chance to make an impact by changing the way the field is defined in terms of research and education in the era of increasing computational resources and data, sustainability goals, and design of previously unseen ship and ship system concepts.

The research within the position focuses especially on understanding, predicting, and controlling the complex, unsteady dynamic phenomena and hydrodynamic forces associated with the interactions of ships with the ocean environment. The position will contribute to hydrodynamics which equips our graduates for the future marine engineering paradigms, such as climate change and green transition.

This position belongs to Aalto University's tenure track career system and will be filled to either assistant, associate or full professor level depending on the chosen candidate (tenure track evaluation criteria). The applicants will be evaluated based on their potential and/or merits in the following dimensions: research, teaching, and impact and service.

Your role and goals

Your role will be to develop and share expertise on understanding and managing ship motions and loads in real operating conditions throughout the lifecycle of a ship. This is essential for safer, more energy-efficient ships:
Current design practices often rely on simplified assumptions that misrepresent the lifetime environmental loads, which affects the performance, structural safety, energy system sizing, and operability of the ship. Ideally, your research will integrate experiments, theory, and simulation in a physics-first manner, directly informing ship design and operations. We expect you to:

• Advance research to improve the prediction and performance of calm-water resistance, hydrodynamic loads, motions, and added resistance, using targeted experiments, full-scale operational data, and both high-fidelity and reduced-order models.
• Build a team and secure research in the field of hydrodynamics by acquiring relevant resources from various sources for applied and fundamental research (such as Research Council of Finland, Business Finland, Horizon Europe).
• Teach on marine hydrostatics and hydrodynamics in ways that connect theory with model- and full-scale experiments and numerical methods for seakeeping, wave loads, and added resistance, while embedding themes of climate adaptation, decarbonization and ship design. Teaching will also cover participation to
  
  B.Sc. and M.Sc. level courses and thesis supervision at all levels.
• Commit to the Aalto Ice and Wave Tank and conduct research and teaching in this internationally unique facility. We also expect from you further development of the facility.

Your network and team

Marine and Arctic Technology research group consists of about 60 employees, including 7 tenure track professors, around 10 postdoctoral researchers and 17 doctoral researchers. Our group is strong in selected strategic areas of marine technology such as advanced structures, arctic technology, passenger ships, and safety of maritime operations. We are globally acknowledged for our achievements in science and education and with this position we will strengthen the hydrodynamics expertise of our group.

The position is linked to the Aalto Ice and Wave tank, a world-unique and major research infrastructure in Finland, reflecting the national commitment to marine technology research and sustainability.

Your experience and ambitions

The candidate is expected to build a versatile team that advances fundamental understanding, theoretical and numerical approaches, and the use of applied methods in ship hydrodynamics by combining model- and full-scale data. They should be able to teach foundational and state-of-the-art approaches and help to grow the hydrodynamics ecosystem of Aalto in collaboration with industry, authorities, and international partners.

Candidates must hold a

D.Sc. or PhD and have a successful postdoctoral or equivalent research or industrial track record. We specifically seek background in:

• at least one or several of the following areas: loads and seakeeping, wave–ship/structure interaction, and free-surface hydrodynamics
• classical hydrodynamics with modern computational and data-driven approaches
• bridging…