The NxGen Project Team

Professor John Andrews - Project Lead

John Andrews is The Royal Academy of Engineering and Network Rail Professor of Asset Management in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. Prior to this he worked for 20 years at Loughborough University where his final post was Professor of Systems Risk and Reliability.

The prime focus of his research has been on methods for predicting system availability and reliability. Much of his early work was concentrated on the Fault Tree analysis technique and the use of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) as an efficient and accurate solution method. Recently attention has turned more to degradation modelling and the effects of maintenance, inspection and renewal on asset performance.

Dr Darren Prescott - Academic Collaborator

Darren Prescott is Assistant Professor in Risk and Reliability Engineering in the Resilience Engineering Research Group at the University of Nottingham, where he has worked since 2010. Prior to this, he worked as a Lecturer at Loughborough University where he previously gained BSc and MSc degrees before being awarded a PhD in 2006 for his research on the application of Monte Carlo simulation techniques for the reliability analysis of degraded redundancy operation in aircraft.

In addition to the use of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD) as a tool to support real time decision making in systems of autonomous systems, recent research has focussed on the application of Monte Carlo simulation and Petri Net models to investigate the impact of asset management on the performance of complex systems and ageing infrastructure.

Dr Derek (Rundong) Yan - Academic Collaborator

Dr Derek (Rundong) Yan is an Assistant Professor in System Risk and Reliability Modelling at the University of Nottingham. He graduated with an MEng from Imperial College London, UK in 2015, and completed a PhD in Control and Reliability at Loughborough University in 2020. 

Derek's current research focuses on developing model-based systems engineering approaches to improve system safety, efficiency, and resilience, thereby reducing the production costs and operational risks, in various industrial sectors. 

Dr Silvia Tolo - Senior Researcher

Silvia Tolo gained an MSc with honours in Energy and Nuclear Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2012. She then started her collaboration with the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty at the University of Liverpool, where she was awarded a Ph.D. in 2016 and covered the position of part-time lecturer for the academic year 2018-2019. She worked as a research associate at the same Institute, in collaboration with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), in 2017 and within the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) on the UK national research programme Digital Reactor Design in 2018.Her current research at the University of Nottingham focuses on the development of theoretical and computational tools for the efficient modelling of complex systems.

Dr Francesco Pugliese - Researcher

Francesco Pugliese is a civil engineer and recipient of an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship at the University of Nottingham, where he has focussed on the development of optimised approaches for improving the asset management of ageing critical infrastructure. He gained his PhD in risk and uncertainty applied to civil engineering from the University of Liverpool.

Professor Antoine Rauzy - Academic Project Partner

Antoine holds a chair in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).  He also teaches at Ecole Centrale de Paris.  Prior to his current posts he has worked at CNRS, the Universities of Bordeaux and Marseilles and gained industrial experience at Dassault Systems. 

He is an internationally renowned expert in model engineering, with a special focus on computer algorithms and modelling languages for probabilistic models for the performance assessment of complex technical systems.

Professor Ali Mosleh - Academic Project Partner

Ali holds the Evelyn Knight Chair in Engineering and is Director of the B. John Garrick institute of Risk Sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles.  Prior to this he was the Nicole J. Kim Eminent Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Risk and Reliability at the University of Maryland. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2010, and is a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, and the American Nuclear Society.  Prof Mosleh is also a consultant and technical advisor to numerous national and international organisations, including appointment by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a position in which he continued to serve in the administration of President Obama. He conducts research on methods for probabilistic risk analysis and reliability of complex systems.