Dimitris Drikakis

He left the University of Strathclyde in October 2018 to join the University of Nicosia in Cyprus as the vice president of global partnerships, executive director of research and innovation, with a full professor (cross-appointment) in the medical school and the School of Sciences and Engineering. The University of Nicosia is a private, English-speaking university, the largest in Cyprus. In 2019, he founded the Defence and Security Research Institute, a multidisciplinary institute dedicated to science and technology and collaboration with governments, industry and academic worldwide.

In July 2015, he was appointed as the executive dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, one of the UK's largest engineering schools. He worked with principal and vice-chancellor, Professor Sir Jim McDonald (electrical engineer). From 2015 to 2018, he held various executive posts as associate principal and executive director of Global Partnerships.

In 2011, he was the founding director of the regional high-performance scientific computing centre at The Cyprus Institute in close partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US.

In 2003 he joined Cranfield University as a professor and head of the Fluid Mechanics and Computational Science Centre. He was appointed head of the Aerospace Science Departments (2005–2010). In 2012, he established the department of engineering physics in the same university, which later evolved to the Institute of Aerospace Sciences. He left Cranfield in 2015. During his tenure at Cranfield University, he held various management and leadership posts, including the director of research in the School of Aerospace, Transport & Manufacturing.

In 1999, he was offered a readership (associate professor position) at Queen Mary, University of London and became a full professor (professor of fluid dynamics) at the same university in 2001. He was 36 years of age.

In 1995, he joined as a lecturer the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), merged later with the University of Manchester. He worked in the Fluid Mechanics Division under Professor Brian Launder and Professor Michael Leschziner.

In 1992, he joined as research scientist and later on as a team leader at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics (Lehrstuhl für Strömungsmechanik – LSTM) of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) under the direction of Professor Franz Durst. He researched in fluid dynamics and high-performance parallel computing at the early stages of developing parallel computers during that period.

He carried out his PhD (1988–1991) at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in the Laboratory of Aerodynamics, Fluids Section. His PhD concerned the development of computational fluid dynamics methods for high-speed compressible flows and co-supervised by the Flight Physics Division of Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), a German aerospace manufacturer formed later on the Airbus Group.

He obtained his mechanical engineering degree (1982–1987) from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. His diploma dissertation was in biofluid mechanics and concerned pulsating blood flow in an anisotropic elastic tube.