Dr Shahroz Khan
Research & Development Lead at BAR Technologies
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow
Maritime Design Researcher
Exploring the Enigma of Design through Generative AI
I am the Research & Development Lead at BAR Technologies, where my team and I focus on creating a "data-driven maritime sustainability" paradigm. By harnessing the synergy between intelligent design, advanced simulation techniques, and cutting-edge generative AI, we aim to establish new industry benchmarks, especially in wind-assisted propulsion systems for cargo vessels. (Find out more here.)
I also concentrate on forging strategic partnerships with premier research institutions worldwide, which are crucial for accelerating innovation and delivering solutions that are not only effective but also sustainable for our oceans.
Previously, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean, and Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, working on an EU-funded project, GRAPES (Learning, Processing, And Optimizing Shapes). The aim of GRAPES was to considerably advance the state of the art in Mathematics, CAD, and Machine Learning to promote game-changing approaches for generating, optimizing, and learning 3D shapes.
My work was supervised by Professor Panagiotis Kaklis from the University of Strathclyde and co-supervised by Professor Fehmi Cirak from the University of Cambridge.
I focused on developing intelligent digital design tools for the maritime industry. Currently, I am creating a Generative AI-assisted design system, ShipHullGAN, which helps designers and engineers to:
Generate appearance- and performance-driven designs at the conceptual design phase.
Overcome the computational burden of physical computer simulations.
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I also had the opportunity to work with renowned professionals in notable organisations.
I worked with Professor Kosa Goucher-Lambert at the Co-Design Lab, University of California, Berkeley, on creating a mixed-initiative generative learning model that engages with designers during the training phase, resulting in an intelligent design and optimisation system. The opportunity to visit the Co-Design lab was made possible through the support of the Royal Society under the HINGE project.
I also visited the Institute of Marine Engineering of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-INM) in Rome, Italy, as a Mac Roberson Visiting Scholar. At the CNR-INM, I worked with Dr Matteo Diez on developing data-driven techniques to enhance the efficiency of shape optimisation.
From August to December 2019, I visited the Virtual Reality Research Group of the Ship Design Laboratory at the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (S-NA&ME) at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in Greece, where I collaborated with Professor Alexandros-Alvertos I. Ginnis to create an immersed computational design platform for complex maritime vessels.
In addition, I was also a research assistant in the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean, and Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, United Kingdom. In this role, I developed a digital system for simulating the operational activities in offshore wind turbine farms as part of the NEXUS project, which was led by a consortium (co-led by ARTTIC and Rolls-Royce Marine) of various key players from four European Union (EU) member states. It was funded by the EU through the Horizon 2020 program.
During my Master's studies, I was a Scholar of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) at the Smart Computer-Aided Design Laboratory of Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, where I worked with Dr Erkan Gunpinar to create a generative framework called ModiYacht for designing superyachts.
Furthermore, I worked as an International Internship Student Trainee with Professor Hiromasa Suzuki at the Geometric Modelling for Industrial Application Laboratory of the University of Tokyo, Japan, where I created a machine intelligence model to infuse human perception into the design process.
Highlight
We have received tremendous attention from both the industry and academia for our work on generative AI for ship design.
Research Experience
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow
Department of Naval Architecture Ocean and Marine Engineering,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Jul 2020 - Jun 2023Project: GRAPES; Funder: European Union Horizon H2020;Research Outcome: IntraSensitivity - SSDR - GMDSA
Research Intern
ITI-global, Cambridge, UK.
Jan 2023 - Mar 2023
Project: GRAPES; Funder: European Union Horizon H2020
Visiting Student Scholar
Co-Design Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of California, Berkeley, US.
Aug 2022 - Nov 2022
Project: HINGE; Funder: Royal Society, UK
Visiting Researcher
Institute of Marine Engineering, National Research Council, Rome, ItalyJan 2020 - Apr 2020Funder: Mac Robertson Travel Scholarship; Research Outcome: PIFFL
Visiting Researcher
Ship Design Lab., School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering,National Technical University of AthensAug 2019 - Dec 2019
Research Assistant
Department of Naval Architecture Ocean and Marine Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UKOct 2018 - Mar 2019Project: NEXUS; Funder: European Union Horizon H2020; Research Outcome: OptiRoute
International Internship Student Trainee
Geometric Modelling for Industrial Application Laboratory, Precision Engineering Department, University of Tokyo, JapanJul 2017 - August 2017Funder: University of Tokyo; Research Outcome: Psycho-Physical Distance
Areas of ReSsearch Interest
Generative AI in Ship Design
Computational Geometry
Scientific Machine/Deep Learning
Shape Optimisation
Generative Design
Design Cognition
2024 New
I'm excited to share that I've been awarded this year's NeT-AI fellowship from DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). More details coming soon!
I had the incredible opportunity to be invited to the prestigious Schloss Dagstuhl seminar on Geometric Modeling: Challenges for Additive Manufacturing, Design, and Analysis, which has been taking place since 1991 on varying themes centered around geometric modeling.
It was an absolute pleasure talking on Robert Weber's podcast about my PhD work on using GenAI for ship design. You can listen to it at Link
I conducted a workshop for final-year MEng students at the University of Strathclyde's Marine Engineering department on the use of GenAI in ship design and operations.
I attended the GRAPES final event at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM) in Linz, Austria.
I have taken up the role of R&D Lead at BAR Technologies, where I am currently co-supervising a team developing smart design and optimization tools for the maritime industry.
2023 News
I have been selected as the winner of the 2023 ASME CIE (Computers & Information in Engineering) Best Dissertation Award (Award to be presented at the IDETC 2023). PhD Thesis.
I won first place in the Images of Research competition, category: Technology Transformer [award night].
I have been selected for OMAE 2023 Outreach for Engineers Forum (I am 1 of 34 students among the 62 applicants and 1 of 10 who were selected to receive an additional travel reimbursement)
I successfully passed my PhD viva examination on January 20th, 2023 😁.
The examination committee, consisting of Dr Dante Kalise from Imperial College and Prof Erkan Oterkus from the University of Strathclyde, concluded after a 3.5-hour oral examination that the PhD should be awarded without amendments to the thesis.
The title of my PhD thesis is "IDEAS@MI: Intelligent data-driven systems for digital design in the maritime industry".
I got an endorsement from the Royal Society of Engineering as an "Exceptional Talent" in the UK in the field of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
If everything goes to plan, then this year I will be attending:
OMAE 2023 in Melbourne, Australia from 11-17 June 2023
Talk title: Physics-Informed Deep Generative Adversarial Network for Hull Form Optimisation in High-Dimensional Design Spaces.
Marine 2023 in Madrid, Spain from 27-29 June 2023
Talk title: Accelerating simulation-driven optimisation of marine propellers using shape-supervised dimension reduction".
PhD Summer School in Physics-Informed Neural Networks at KTH Stockholm.
Geometry Summit 2023 in Genova, Italy from 3-7th July 2023.
Talk title: Geometry Functionals as Physics-Informed Accelerators of Shape Optimisation
IDETC/CIE 2023 in Boston, MA from August 20 – 23, 2023
Talk title: How does agency impact human-AI collaborative design space exploration? A case study on ship design with deep generative models