Prof. Themis Sapsis

Dr. Sapsis is the William I. Koch Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at MIT as well as the Director of the Center for Ocean Engineering. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CSSE), both within Schwarzman College of Computing. He received a Diploma in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from Technical University of Athens, Greece and a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Ocean Engineering from MIT. Before his faculty appointment at MIT he served as Research Scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He has also been a visiting faculty at ETH-Zurich. Prof. Sapsis work lies on the interface of nonlinear dynamical systems, probabilistic modeling and data-driven methods. A particular emphasis of his work is the formulation of mathematical methods for the prediction, statistical quantification and optimization of complex engineering and physical systems with extreme transient features, such as turbulent fluid flows in engineering and geophysical settings, nonlinear waves, and extreme ship motions. He has received numerous awards including three Young Investigator Awards (Navy, Army and Air-Force research office), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, the Verisk AI Faculty Research Award, the MathWorks Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship, and more recently the ASME Lloyd Hamilton Donnell Award and the Bodossaki Award on Basic Sciences: Mathematics.

Teaching

2.122/2.121Stochastic Systems
2.003Dynamics and Control I
2.081Plates and Shells
2.700Principles of Naval Architecture

Editorial work

2023-Journal of Nonlinear Science
2017-SIAM/ASA Journal of Uncertainty Quantification
2022-International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics
2016-International Journal of Offshore and Polar Engineering
2017-2023Nature-Springer Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics
2017-2018ASME Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics, Guest Editor
2014-2016Journal of Ocean and Wind Energy