Thomas B. Johannessen Email & Phone Number

I took both my degrees at Imperial College in London where I graduated with a PhD in 1997. The PhD work was concerned with the experimental, statistical and theoretical description of large ocean waves. After completing my studies, I started working in Oslo with the Aker-Kværner group of companies. After following two field development projects, I transferred to the front-end division where I spent ten years with concept development and studies using much of my time specifying and following up model test campaigns in facilities all over the world.Moving to DNV in 2011 was a very positive experience, it is a joy to work with motivated and highly competent colleagues in an international environment. This enthusiasm led me to seek line management in DNV and I was head of the Hydrodynamics and Mooring section and the Hydrodynamics and Structural Reliability group between 2012 and 2016 being responsible for a maximum of 21 people. The administrative burden is high, however, in combination with a desire to maintain an expert role, and it was good to return to a technical position in 2016.It has been important to me to keep in touch with the academic community and I have continued to publish articles since I started working in the industry. The main topics of the publications have been within the physical and statistical description of ocean waves, response of offshore structures, and on renewables and concept development. I am first author of twenty articles, have given seminars and guest lectures at many universities, have supervised master and PhD students and act as external examiner at the universities of Oslo and Trondheim.I had the privilege of attending a course at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley in 2015 and 2016 which has reawakened my interest in disruptive innovation and the Blue Economy, and I want to spend more of my time on sustainability issues in the years to come. I am particularly interested in clean water supply and have been working with wave power driven water desalination since 2002. I hold two patents on this technology which has been published and successfully model tested.Founding Ocean Oasis in 2020 together with Kristine and Sebastian and securing the funding to carry out a full-scale pilot project in 2021/2022 has been an incredible journey. Concentrating first on demonstrating the economy of desalinating seawater by wave power without going via electricity, we are moving towards developing fully commercial units and do our bit to address the global water scarcity challenge.