Simon Hogg returned to academia from industry in January 2010. He holds the DONG Chair in Renewable Energy at the University and is also the Executive Director of the Durham Energy Institute (https://www.dur.ac.uk/dei/). He is a mechanical engineer with research interests in the general areas of power generation conventional steam and gas turbine plant, wind turbines, energy systems and waste heat recovery. He the Principal Investigator of the EPRSC Future Conventional Power Research Consortium (Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds & Oxford Universities), which is considering the effect of the change in power mix from the growth of wind on the flexible operating requirements for conventional steam and gas power plant. He is also the Durham University lead member on the Executive Management Team of the EPSRC Supergen Wind Hub (Cranfield, Durham, Loughborough, Manchester, STFC & Strathclyde Universities). This is one of the EPSRC’s Supergen research coordination organisations, focusing on the UK academic contribution to wind power research in this case.
Simon graduated with a BSc and PhD from University of Manchester. His PhD study was funded by Rolls Royce and concerned developing computational fluid dynamics codes for designing gas turbine combustors. He held University posts at Oxford (Rolls Royce funded Research Fellow) and then Leicester (University Lecturer) Universities for the 10 years following completion of his PhD. He then moved into the power generation equipment supply industry joining Alstom’s power generation division in 1998. He worked first in Steam Turbine R&D as a group leader and R&D project manager. In 2003 he moved into Alstom’s Steam Turbine Retrofit Business where he held senior management/technical leadership positions in technical sales and order engineering, eventually becoming Engineering Director in 2007.
Simon is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.