Nikos is the Research Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing Simulation and Robotics and the Director of the Master’s of Engineering with Business Programme at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering in UCD. His research expertise includes Simulation, Control and Scheduling of Manufacturing Systems; Digital Manufacturing Applications; Virtualization of Manufacturing Systems and Processes; Engineering/Manufacturing Knowledge Management.
He has coordinated several European Research Projects in which advanced manufacturing software tools and platforms were developed. He has cooperated with many leading companies in Europe, mainly in the automotive, aerospace and machine tool building sectors. He has worked as CIO in a large steel products manufacturing company. Nikos is a member of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) and has approximately 100 publications in international scientific journals and refereed conferences. He received a PhD in Engineering and a Diploma (MSc) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece.
The main objective of Nikos’ I-Form research is to develop novel software tools that will allow for the better understanding of additive manufacturing (AM) processes at a system level, so that better decisions can be made in the following areas:
Product design for AM
AM process configuration and control
Optimisation of the operation of AM resources and organisations
The ultimate goals are to reduce the cost of designing and producing products with AM technologies and to accelerate the product development process, by minimising product design and manufacturing iterations.
Technologies including agent-based software frameworks, artificial intelligence and optimisation techniques, supply chain network planning algorithms, Machine Learning and knowledge-based systems have already been or will be utilised.
Expertise
Advanced Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Design for Manufacture (DfM), Process Modeling, Process Optimisation, Robotics