The time has finally arrived. As per previous plans, and as of 1 Jan. 2024, what I define as my "active academic career" has been completed. From a formal perspective, I have retired and have called it a career- so to speak, that is. From a substantive perspective, a big page is turned.
First, a disclaimer: I can now confess that I really did not plan any of this when I finished my undergraduate studies at NTUA in 1974 and was ready to go to MIT. Most surely I did not plan to have an academic career; I did not plan to switch interest from hard core naval architecture and marine engineering to operations research and transportation logistics; I surely did not plan to return to Greece in 1989; I did not plan to go the port of Piraeus in 1996 and surely I did not plan to go to DTU.
Over my academic career, I dealt with many different research areas that were very diverse and some had very little or zero commonality with other areas. For instance, is there anything in common between routing of vehicles in an urban setting and maritime safety? Or, between oil spill response and maritime emissions? Or, between ocean acoustic detection and shortsea shipping? I did not do this on purpose, it just happened. For me personally this diversity has been pretty exciting. Scroll down for a list of areas.
My port of Piraeus CEO career involved a completely different dimension, and it was sometimes schizophrenic to see the same topic from two perspectives, the academic perspective and the real world perspective, and realize there was a huge gap between the two. It was indeed a once in a lifetime experience, and the port of Piraeus was a great school. See HERE for more on Piraeus.
And then what happens next? Not 100% clear yet. I will transcend to Professor Emeritus at DTU. I will continue co-supervising a PhD thesis at DTU and I am on the committee of some NTUA PhD theses. I have some papers in the pipeline, and maybe I will write some additional ones. Between the two extremes, (a) continue as before and (b) stop completely (and I know examples in both cases), I will be somewhere in between.
So let's take a look: this has been an academic career of (at least) 44.5 years, or 534 months. In a strict sense, it started on 1 July 1979 when I started as an Assistant Professor at MIT, and it ended on 31 Dec. 2023 when I retired as a Professor at DTU.
More precisely, below are all of the academic positions I have held thus far:
I do not count my time as a Research Associate (Postdoc) at MIT (9/1978-6/1979), prior to starting as an Assistant Professor. Nor do I count 4 years as a Research and Teaching Assistant when I was a graduate student at MIT (9/1974-8/1978). Had I counted those too, it would be almost 50 years- in fact my 50 year jubilee graduation from NTUA (1974) is this year, 2024 (=1974+50).
It is surely a daunting task to look back and reflect at the quasi-random sequence of events that formed that career. 15 years in Boston and MIT (1974-1989). 24 years in Athens and NTUA (1989-2013). 10.5 years in Copenhagen and DTU (2013-2023). And in between, 5.5 years in Piraeus (1996-2002), as CEO of the Port. Equally daunting is to go over what has been produced all these years.
In a sense, history and others will evaluate this work, if anybody is interested, that is. But below is an imperfect and incomplete attempt to give a personal account, with an emphasis on research.
First, a disclaimer: I can now confess that I really did not plan any of this when I finished my undergraduate studies at NTUA in 1974 and was ready to go to MIT. Most surely I did not plan to have an academic career; I did not plan to switch interest from hard core naval architecture and marine engineering to operations research and transportation logistics; I surely did not plan to return to Greece in 1989; I did not plan to go the port of Piraeus in 1996 and surely I did not plan to go to DTU.
Over my academic career, I dealt with many different research areas that were very diverse and some had very little or zero commonality with other areas. For instance, is there anything in common between routing of vehicles in an urban setting and maritime safety? Or, between oil spill response and maritime emissions? Or, between ocean acoustic detection and shortsea shipping? I did not do this on purpose, it just happened. For me personally this diversity has been pretty exciting. Scroll down for a list of areas.
My port of Piraeus CEO career involved a completely different dimension, and it was sometimes schizophrenic to see the same topic from two perspectives, the academic perspective and the real world perspective, and realize there was a huge gap between the two. It was indeed a once in a lifetime experience, and the port of Piraeus was a great school. See HERE for more on Piraeus.
My involvement in sustainable shipping started in 2008 with a very small project on ship emissions sponsored by the Hellenic Chamber of Shipping (see HERE). And then there were many additional projects and as it turned out this has been the main focus of my research activity in recent years.
My participation in the activities of the IMO (International Maritime Organization) started in 2006, as a member of the Greek delegation, and involved both IMO's Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) and the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC). In 2007 I chaired a group on environmental risk evaluation criteria as applied to oil pollution, something that lasted 4 years. I was also in various MEPC groups on greenhouse gases (GHGs), which is a topic that I have followed in recent years. See HERE for an incomplete list of IMO documents (only those under the Greek delegation are included- there are also some under the Danish delegation).
Among the 55 research projects of which I have been the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI (11 at MIT, 32 at NTUA, and 12 at DTU), 25 were EU projects. Among the latter, I was the consortium manager in 3, all at NTUA. The full list of all these projects is HERE. An estimate of the total funding of these projects is close to 16 million € (2023 prices).
A link to NTUA projects is HERE; the Lab for Maritime Transport (LMT) web site (www.martrans.org) gives a pretty accurate account of all of my NTUA activity and also hosts many of my papers including some from MIT. There is no similar link for MIT projects, or for DTU projects, However, links to some web sites of individual DTU projects are included if you go to each major research area- see below.
Major research areas
I tried to group all of my research into several major research areas. I mainly did this for my own use, to separate the forest from the trees, see list below. For more details on what was accomplished on each area, what were the related projects, what were the papers, etc, you can click the corresponding link. Numbers in parentheses are total # of papers in refereed journals, papers in refereed conferences, books, and book chapters associated with each area. Other conferences, internal reports, or other publications are NOT included in these numbers. No guarantee this is a 100% complete list, but I would say it is pretty close to that.
So here is the list:
Vehicle routing etc (18)
Oil spills (32)
Ports (14)
Maritime emissions (73)
Other research (28) - these are diverse topics that do not fall under any of the above.
Total (243)
Note that there is no 100% mapping of papers vs (funded) projects, as there are many papers that were not funded by any project. Example: around 60% of the journal papers that I published at DTU were not funded by any project! There are also some funded projects that produced no papers!
Also note that there may be overlaps, as a publication in one area may be considered to (also) fall in another area. However, there is no double counting: I assigned each publication only to one area.
For honors, distinctions and awards, including bibliometrics, see HERE.
For advice/service to international bodies, see HERE
Acknowledgments
All this would not be possible were it not for the help and support of many people, initially starting from the various supervisors I had throughout my studies and then moving on to the many colleagues, co-authors, other associates and students, and various research partners in academia and industry, who were involved in my research. To all these, too many to list here individually, I can only be grateful.
To all my employers, and to all the agencies that funded my projects, thank you for the opportunity.
Above all, I am grateful to my parents Nikos and Irene who supported me through my studies and saw some parts of this career (until 1994 and 2011 respectively). Also to my wife Aleka and children Anastasia and Nikos who have been a constant source of emotional support and for putting up with me for all the travels that I had to make (for my trips on business see HERE).
The road ahead
And then what happens next? Not 100% clear yet. I will transcend to Professor Emeritus at DTU. I will continue co-supervising a PhD thesis at DTU and I am on the committee of some NTUA PhD theses. I have some papers in the pipeline, and maybe I will write some additional ones. Between the two extremes, (a) continue as before and (b) stop completely (and I know examples in both cases), I will be somewhere in between.
It is unlikely I will go to a Greek καφενείο to play backgammon (using a popular Greek phrase for what retirees are supposed to do). I may be engaged in some activities as an external consultant. I want to continue being engaged in some scientific and policy stuff that I am interested in. Surely I will have more time to do things that I was unable to do before, like spending more time with my family, or leisure travel. Painting and photography are two candidate activities.
Whatever it is, I will try to keep you posted.
POST SCRIPTUM
I coined the term "PSEXIT" to the whole career exit scheme. For some Psexit FAQs, see HERE:
See also:
Also featuring (but not limited to): Pelé, the Rolling Stones, the Boston Celtics, and Claude Monet.
