Dr. Themistoklis Sapsis

Biography

Professor Themistoklis Sapsis is the William Koch Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Ocean Engineering and the Co-Director of the MIT Maritime Consortium. His research interests include the quantification and prediction of extreme events within complex systems, reduced order modeling, chaotic turbulent systems, and fluid dynamics in engineering and geophysics contexts. Sapsis received his Diploma in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2005 and completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Ocean Engineering at MIT in 2011. His work focuses on the interface of nonlinear dynamical systems and probabilistic modeling using data-driven methods, particularly emphasizing the mathematical formulation for prediction, statistical quantification, and optimization of complex engineering systems. He has received numerous accolades for his research, including Young Investigator Awards from the Navy and Air Force, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, and the ASME Lloyd Hamilton Donnell Award. He has held various faculty positions at MIT and has made significant contributions to the fields of nonlinear dynamics, energy harvesting, and climate modeling.

Research Interests

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Awards