About:

This public lecture was part of the Waves and Free Surface Flows: the Next Twenty Years workshop at ICMS.

About the talk:

The study of ocean waves experienced a considerable leap eighty years ago during the second world war. In this talk, we explained some key results in the study of ocean waves over the last eighty years. We described the scientific challenges associated with the study of ocean waves and how a multidisciplinary approach is often the only way to move forward.

About the speaker:

Frédéric Dias (he/him), University College Dublin

Frederic Dias received a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, in 1986. He started his career in the US before coming back to France to join CNRS in 1990. In 2000, he moved to Ecole normale supérieure Paris–Saclay (ENSPS) and has been a Professor of Applied Mathematics since. In 2009, he went to University College Dublin (UCD) on leave to work on wave energy converters. He is now leading the joint ENSPS/UCD wave group. In 2012, he received an advanced grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on extreme wave events. In 2014, he received a proof of concept grant from the ERC to work on wave measurement. In 2019, he received a second advanced grant from the ERC to work on wave breaking. In 2023, he received a second proof of concept grant from the ERC to use wireless wave sensor technology deployed on a connected buoy to measure and instantaneously transmit raw data of the sea state (air and water) at a given location, at a very low communication cost.

Prof. Frédéric Dias was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2016, of the Academy of Europe in 2017 and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2019.

In 2014, Prof. Frédéric Dias has been awarded the Emilia Valori prize for applications of science by the French Academy of Sciences.Prof. Frédéric Dias is co-chief editor of the European Journal of Mechanics B/Fluids and has been Secretary General of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) from 2008 to 2016.

As part of his HIGHWAVE project on wave breaking, Frédéric Dias built a research station on Inis Meáin, the middle of the three Aran Islands in western Ireland.