Project Management
Kjell G. Robbersmyr – Project Manager
Kjell is a full professor in UiA – Mechatronics. Kjell has (co)authored over 130 publications in the field of mechanical engineering, vehicle crash diagnostics and CM. Kjell has long and successful leadership experience in managing large-scale research projects. In his capacity as head of research group at Agder research, Kristiansand, he was responsible for developing a test site at Lista Airport, Farsund for vehicle crash diagnostics, where around 140 tests were documented. Since 2015, Kjell heads condition monitoring group at UiA, that has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers in the area of CM for rotating machinery making it probably the top research centre in Norway for CM. Since 2016, Kjell was a project leader on the Norwegian-Polish wind energy project (STOW) and from 2017, Kjell was a member of the centre management group of the NORCOWE program. Since 2019, Kjell is also the director of the Top Priority Research Centre in Mechatronics at UiA. Kjell is also instrumental in realizing and conducting research under the SFI Offshore Mechatronics, WP 5 on CM.
Surya T. Kandukuri – Assistant Project Manager
Surya is a Sr. Scientist with Smart Instrumentation and Industrial Testing group at NORCE Norwegian Research Centre . He is also a researcher (part-time) at UiA – Mechatronics. He has obtained his PhD degree at UiA in the area of CM and (co)authored more than 20 publications. He has over 13 years of experience in developing CM solutions for energy, aerospace and marine equipment in GE Global Research, Airbus Defence and Space, Machine Prognostics AS, and Cognite AS. Surya will be the assistant project manager for the PHMHydro project. He will also work as a researcher in part time position on work package 4.
Lars Vognild – WP 1 Leader
is senior researcher at NORCE and former head of the ICT research department at NORUT. His research interest is on netcentric computing, where he has participated in many national and international research projects, both as project manager and WP leader. He currently leads the task on IoT sensor platform in the H2020 AquaVitae project.
Rune Schlanbusch – WP 2 Leader
Rune works as deputy research director at NORCE Norwegian Research Center, Norway, within the group of Smart Instrumentation and Industrial Testing. Rune received his MSc within Space Technology at University of Tromsø (UiT), Norway and PhD within Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. His research interests include control design and stability analysis of unmanned systems, condition monitoring of machinery and structures and multi-physics FEM modeling and simulation conveyed through 60 research papers. Rune will be leading work package 2 in PHMHydro.
Van Khang Huynh – WP 3 Leader
Khang is a full professor in UiA – Mechatronics, with a research focus on design and control of electrical machinery, CM of rotating machinery and renewable energy systems. Khang has (co)authored about 70 papers in the above fields. Khang holds a PhD in electrical machine design from Aalto University, Finland. Khang is a PI and project manager on industry co-funded projects with RCN and Flekkefjord Elektro on control and CM of electrical winches and compact-efficient bidirectional converters, ENERGIX program on Integrated Renewable Resources and Storage: Operations and Management, and EMONDI – Industrial Internet methods for electrical energy conversion systems monitoring and diagnostics (EEA Grants, 2021-2023). Khang will be leading work package 3 in PHMHydro.
Grunde Olimstad – WP4 Leader
Grunde works at Å Energi with maintenance planning and development of methods for predictive maintenance. He obtained his PhD at the Waterpower laboratory; NTNU, in 2012. This within design of reversible pump-turbines resolving instability issues. He worked two years as a researcher for the turbine manufacturer Rainpower. From 2014 he worked 5 years as head of the pump technology department of Eureka Pumps with product development and innovations. Grunde has authored several publications with various topics within rotating machinery. Grunde will be leading workpackage 4 in PHMHydro.
Nils Lofstad
Nils Lofstad is area sales manager for the renewable energy sector at Volue Industrial IoT AS. He holds an engineering degree in Telecom from AID and cand.scient degree in physics from UiO. Prior to the position at Volue, he has worked as a hardware designer, system designer and product manager at STK, Alcatel, Axxessit and Ericsson.
Vignesh V. Shanbhag is currently working as Researcher with NORCE. He received M.Tech. degree in manufacturing engineering from the Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India, in 2015, and joint Ph.D. degree in manufacturing engineering from Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia and Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, in 2019. His research interests include developing new condition monitoring solutions for the intermittently operating machines that cannot be monitored by the technology that is commercially available in market. Vignesh will be working as a researcher on work package 2.
Phuoc is a PhD research fellow in UiA – Mechatronics . He took his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research was on electrical synchronous machine analysis and traction drive systems. Currently, his research topic focuses on hydrogenator condition monitoring and fault detection, utilising FEA modelling and machine learning. Phouc is the PhD candidate under work package 3.