Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:        +44 (0)1224 274407
Eng.:        +44 (0)1224 272797
Email:      r.d.neilson@abdn.ac.uk
Address: The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Richard has 34 years’ experience in engineering research and development within the University sector, with much of his research undertaken in association with industry.  This started with his PhD on the vibration of aircraft engines with Rolls Royce Ltd.   Most of his research has involved the application of design and dynamic analysis to solving engineering problems.  From 1998-2002 he spent four years on part-time industrial secondment to an oil services company and since then much of his research has been in the context of oil and gas, subsea engineering and decommissioning.  He is currently Director of the National Decommissioning Centre, and is leading the Centre’s input to the development of an underwater laser cutting system.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)1224 274403
Mob.:        +44 (0)7741 628523
Email:       e.karen.mcardle@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Karen joined the NDC in April 2019 as Centre Manager.  Prior to this, she was the Manager of the £6.5 million Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Medical Mycology and the £5.1 million Wellcome Trust Strategic Award for Medical Mycology and Fungal Immunology at the University of Aberdeen.  Between 2006 and 2011, she was Business Development Officer for Schools of Biological Sciences and Psychology at the University.  Karen has a PhD in Medicine and Therapeutics and completed a Medical Research Scotland research fellowship at the University of Aberdeen from 2004 – 2006.  Following her undergraduate degree, she spent six years working for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals in several roles, including Team Leader for continuous improvement in the regulatory department at the Irvine UK manufacturing site.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:       +44 (0)7772133472
Email:      malcolm.stone@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Malcolm is Business Development Analyst at the NDC.  Malcolm has worked in the oil and gas industry and aerospace industries for more than 15 years. This has been both as a regulator, infield and in technical business development roles.  He has also worked for 12 years within academia, developing projects with industry, project managing to ensure they deliver clear outcomes and deliverables, both at research and commercial stages. He joined the NDC from the Oil and Gas Authority where he was Technology Manager and his role focused on the regulatory processes, technology mapping and operator stewardship audits.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:     +44(0)797591482
Email:   marcin.kapitaniak@abdn.ac.uk
Address: The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Marcin is Simulator Technical Manager at the NDC.  He is a PDRA with 9 years academic research experience in applied engineering, particularly in nonlinear dynamics modelling and the field of Finite Element (FE) Modelling. Marcin supervises the operation of the NDC’s state-of-the-art Marine Simulator developed by Offshore Simulation Centre (OSC), Norway. Marcin has been involved in applied research in close collaboration with companies from the energy sector (Welltec, Varel International, RotoJar, READ Cased Hole, VBPR, Halliburton) through 11 research projects.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)7990441658
Email:       sergi.arnau@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Sergi is Project Delivery Manager at the NDC. He has a background in mechanical engineering. He further developed his skills in engineering and research during his PhD at Aberdeen University in the field of geotechnics and soil mechanics. He was a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) associate in 2016, a two-year project in the context of oil and gas, subsea engineering and decommissioning.  He has four years of managerial experience in the manufacturing and machining sector.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)1224 274401
Email:       f.l.barr@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, South Building

Fiona is the NDC Administrator providing support to the National Decommissioning Centre project teams including its external industry partners.  Fiona inducts new staff/students to working at the NDC and manages resources such as IT equipment, desk space and catering, leads on NDC diaries management including the Director’s diary and organising top-level meetings.  Fiona is also responsible for administration for the NDC Business Unit which provides technical services to industry. Fiona joined the University in 1998 and prior to to working at the NDC within the School of Engineering was part of the School of Biological Sciences with Oceanlab and postgraduate research administration.  Fiona has a degree in Business & Administration from the University of Strathclyde.

 Contact Details

Telephone:        +447391416631
Email:       catherine.shanks@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Catherine is the dedicated Marketing and Communications Officer for the NDC. She joined the NDC in April 2023 from the University of Aberdeen’s Communications Team and has also spent time with the School of Psychology as well as Development and Alumni Relations. Prior to working at the University of Aberdeen she was a Communications Officer for Police Scotland for six years. An alumna of the University of Aberdeen Catherine trained with the Evening Express in Aberdeen and has worked as a print and online journalist.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:       s.cauvin@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Samuel is a Research Fellow at the NDC working on simulator-based projects, and previously worked with the NDC on the design of a secure data repository for decommissioning data. His background is in computing and data, having completed both an MSci in computing science and a PhD on regulating distributed data exchange without a centralised authority with the University of Aberdeen.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:        +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:      kate.gormley@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Kate is an experienced multidisciplinary research fellow with a research and industry background in marine spatial planning; scenario planning; cumulative and environmental impact assessments; industry stakeholder engagement (primarily offshore energy and shipping); automated image analysis; Arctic research, data and spatial analysis. Kate is currently working on the Data for Net Zero (D4NZ) project at the NDC.

Externally, Kate is a member of several interdisciplinary industry and governmental working groups, including the Society of Underwater Technology’s Decommissioning and Wreck Removal Committee, the UK Government’s Productive Seas Evidence group and the Blue Economy Cluster Builder Focus Group on Circular Economy model for decommissioning for marine biomass.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:      keith.jackson@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:        +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:      s.jalili@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Shahin Jalili is a Research Fellow in Optimisation, Decision-Making, and Simulation at the National Decommissioning Centre (NDC). He currently works on the Data for Net Zero (D4NZ) project funded by the Scottish Government’s Energy Transition Fund through the Net Zero Technology Centre. He joined the School of Engineering of the University of Aberdeen in early 2020 as a Research Fellow to work on the DecomTools project funded by the European Union. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Exeter, where he was working on the Decarbonisation of Transportation Networks in the UK. His main areas of expertise are Structural Engineering, Transport Decarbonisation, Engineering Optimisation, Offshore Wind, and Decommissioning.

His research interests focus on problems that link engineering, computer science, and mathematical science, with particular emphasis on optimisation methods and numerical algorithms. He has developed a series of numerical approaches for various optimisation problems in different branches of engineering, ranging from optimum design problems of skeletal and composite structures to performance optimisation of traffic transportation networks. He has also worked on the mathematical aspects of finite element analysis by application of polynomial vector extrapolation methods and developed new structural and sensitivity reanalysis formulations to reduce computational complexity.

Contact Details

Email:      alethea.madgett@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Alethea is a Research Fellow at the NDC working with stakeholders to develop a better understanding of the environmental effects of decommissioning within a multidisciplinary framework. She was previously an environmental consultant and has 5 years of experience in marine ecotoxicological research; studying the ecosystem dynamics and bioaccumulation of organic and inorganic contaminants in the marine food web.

Contact Details

Email:      rebecca.vonhellfeld@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Rebecca is a Research Fellow at the NDC working on a desktop-based collaboration project with Curtin University, for the risk based marine impact assessment of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) and mercury from decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure. Her focus is the assessment of mercury bioaccumulation in marine food web models, as well as determining the potential human exposure via dietary uptake though seafood for different communities. Her background lies in ecotoxicology (PhD University of Heidelberg) and marine biology (Erasmus Mundus MSc Marine environment and resources).

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:        +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:      lawrence.wilcox1@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Dr Lawrence B. Wilcox is an experienced engineer and research scientist in the fields of mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering and offshore engineering, with 15+ years of experience in academia and industry. Dr Wilcox holds a PhD in petroleum engineering with an MSc in petroleum and gas engineering, and a BEng in mechanical engineering. His areas of expertise are computational geomechanics, reservoir engineering, structural geology, rock mechanics, and offshore well integrity.

He has worked and lived in Canada, Netherlands, England, USA, Nigeria and currently resides in Scotland where he works as a Research Fellow at the National Decommissioning Centre – conducting research in offshore energy decarbonisation, infrastructure re-use, repurposing and energy transition on the Data for Net Zero (D4NZ) project. He works with a team of researchers to develop tools for quantifying and reducing the emissions associated with decommissioning of offshore energy assets and the possibility to re-use and re-purpose existing infrastructure.

Contact details

Telephone:   +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:     alicia.terrerogonzalez@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Alicia is a Research Fellow at the NDC, specializing in marine simulation and renewable energy technologies. Her primary focus is modelling wind and wave technologies using the state-of-art Marine Simulator, engaging in collaborative projects between academia and industry. She has over 4 years of experience in energy and applied engineering research, particularly in nonlinear dynamics modelling and marine energy harvesting. Her background lies in nonlinear mechanical engineering. She completed a joint PhD with Curtin and Aberdeen University and has an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Aberdeen.

Contact details

Telephone:   +44 (0)1224 274410
Email:     michael.olatunde@abdn.ac.uk
Address:  National Decommissioning Centre, North Building

Michael is an experienced engineer and research fellow in Marine Simulation and Modelling. His research is focused on the collaborative development of new and innovative models of offshore renewable energy technologies and the optimisation of decommissioning activities by using the NDC’s state-of-the-art Marine Simulator. His PhD research focused on the longevity and fate of left-in-place offshore pipelines. Michael is a civil engineer by background and has an MSc in offshore engineering. He has over 15 years of industry experience across the telecommunications and energy industries and has successfully managed several facility information management and design verification projects with leading energy companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell. During his spare time he loves to create abstract arts and is a programming/automation and controls hobbyist.

Contact Details

Telephone:
NDC:         +44 (0)1224 274415
Email:       j.polanski@abdn.ac.uk
Address:   The University of Aberdeen, National Decommissioning Centre, South Building

John is Electronics Research Technician at the NDC.  He has a HD in Applied Physics with Electronics and previous experience includes UKAEA, Marine Laboratory and Teleco Oilfield Services till being employed by the University of Aberdeen in 1987 in the Department of Engineering then MATSS.  As Electronics/Laser technician within the Laser Research Group he gained extensive laser/optics and CO2 laser welding experience.  His main role at the NDC is production, maintenance and repair of electronic and scientific equipment but his responsibilities also include H&S inspections, testing, certification and documentation.