Fellows
Dionysios Panagiotopoulos
Dionysios studied Civil Engineering in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and he obtained his diploma in 2013. In the following years, he delved into the field of Computational Mechanics graduating with a M. Sc. degree from the Technical University of Munich in 2017. He became familiar with computational acoustics and Pass-by Noise during his internships in the Acoustics Research Institute (Vienna) and in ESI Group (San Diego and Munich), where he wrote also his master thesis. Specifically, the thesis concerned the development of methodology for the simplification of exterior acoustics BEM models with the use of Ray Tracing.
Currently, he is employed by KU Leuven as a PhD researcher and has joined PBNv2 network as a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher to investigate the full frequency range noise prediction in the Pass-by Noise context. His research mainly focuses on the deployment and development of Model Order Reduction techniques to increase efficiency of numerical simulations.
Ze Zhang
Zhang Ze obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in vehicle engineering at Dalian University of Technology (China). Subsequently, he obtained his Master of Science degrees both from Tongji University (China) and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), majoring in automotive engineering. He performed his master thesis in Volvo Cars (Gothenburg, Sweden) with a focus on wind-induced sound source localization on a Volvo car.
After obtaining the master degree, he was employed as a powertrain N&V engineer at Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (GM R&D center in China) for two years.
He is currently employed by KU Leuven as a Marie Curie ESR with a research focus on development of enhanced acoustic trim materials for engine bay noise abatement.
Giorgio Pulvirenti
Giorgio Pulvirenti obtained his Bachelors in mechanical engineering at "Università degli Studi di Catania" and his Masters in the same topic at "Politecnico di Milano". During the master's degree, he choose to specialize in automotive engineering, with a focus on topics such as vehicle dynamics and control, vehicle design, and optimization. He performed his Master thesis activity at Siemens Industry Software NV in Leuven (Belgium), where he spent a period of six months as intern working on load identification techniques applied on McPherson struts. After his degree, he worked for one year and five months as research engineer at Siemens Industry Software NV, focusing on vehicle dynamics.
He is currently employed as a Marie Curie ESR at the Laboratoire Vibrations Acoustique, INSA-Lyon (FR). His research activity is focused on finding possible links between psychoacoustic metrics and parameters of numerical models will be studied in the context of pass-by-noise for hybrid and electric vehicle. The aim of the project is to understand how metrics related to cars’ detectability (by normal and hearing-impaired people) are affected by numerical approximation.
Emmanuel Manu Dabankah
I am currently a PhD Student at INSA-Lyon and I am native of Ghana. I am hold an M.Sc and B.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering from KTH in Stockholm and KNUST in Ghana respectively. After my postgraduate studies I worked as a CAE-Analyst in Fraunhofer, Germany.
My current research is being held at INSA Lyon on the topic:" Recognition, Separation and Characterization of Noise Sources in Vehicles".
Nikolaos Kournoutos
Nikolaos studied Physics at the University of Athens (Greece), graduating with a BSc degree in 2014. He also studied Music in theory and performance before moving on to earn a MSc degree in Acoustics and Music Technology from the University of Edinburgh (UK). In his Master's thesis he investigated Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) methods for the simulation of room acoustics.
He has joined PBNv2 as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton (UK), researching the development of directional warning sound systems in order to reduce electric vehicle pass-by noise.
Athanasios Papaioannou
Athanasios studied electrical engineering and computer science at Democritus University of Thrace (Greece), obtaining his Master degree in 2017. He performed his Master thesis activity at Antenna Company in Eindhoven (Holland), where he spent a period of four months as intern in the analysis and design of compact antenna array radiation patterns with use of the Characteristic Mode analysis.
He is currently employed as a Marie Curie ESR at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (UK) and enrolled at the University of Southampton Doctoral Program (UK). His research activity is focused on microphone array processing approaches to estimate drive-by noise with static vehicles in laboratory environments.
Xue Zhang
Xue did Erasmus Mundus master program in photonic network engineering from 2012 to 2014 and hold two master degree from Aston University (UK) and Osaka University (Japan). She did her master thesis in Technical University Berlin and Fraunhofer, Heinrich Hertz Institute (Germany).
From 2008 to 2012 Xue studied Electronic, electrical and computer engineering as bachelor student in University of Birmingham (UK) and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China). After the graduation of master study, Xue worked in Huawei technologies in Germany for 3.5 years in the field of information and communication technology.
She is currently employed as a Marie Curie ESR at Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna and enrolled as PhD student in KU Leuven. Her research focuses on vehicle noise source modelling in the context of real world operation data.
Nicola Contartese
Nicola studied mechanical engineering both at University of Calabria (Italy) and Hochschule Bochum (Germany), obtaining his Master degree in 2017. He performed his Master thesis activity at Siemens Industry Software (SISW) in Leuven (Belgium), where he spent a period of almost six months as intern in the Simulation division dealing with the contact analysis of cylindrical and spiral bevel gears by means of FE analysis.
He is currently employed as a Marie Curie ESR at Virtual Vehicle Research Center (Austria) and enrolled at the Arenberg Doctoral School of KU Leuven (Belgium). His research activity is focused on a combined experimental-numerical approach for efficient vehicle noise radiation analysis.
Mansour Alkmim
Mansour Hassan Alkmim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Science with emphasis on control and vibrations at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. Mansour received a scholarship to study at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in the United States, where he obtained a minor degree in Aerospace Engineering. His Master’s thesis was on the topic of passive vibration absorbers with application in wind turbines.
In February 2018, He has joined PBNv2 as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) at the Siemens PLM (SISW), Leuven, Belgium and is currently pursuing PhD at KU Leuven.
His research concerns the development of a virtual pass-by noise sound synthesis platform which will be used to make predictions and assessment for various driving scenarios.
Jesús Ortega
Jesús holds a Master’s degree and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería of Universidad de Sevilla. For his Bachelor’s thesis he implemented a real time multibody simulator of a two wheels vehicle, and for his Master’s thesis he developed different methods for dynamic auscultation of railroads and presented a study comparing them. After graduation, he started to work as a mechanical engineer for the engineering services sector, where he worked a few months before entering Siemens PLM. After one year working at Siemens he enrolled there as a PhD student at the university of KU Leuven within the frame of a Marie Curie Fellowship in the PBNv2 project. His research is mainly focused on hybrid technologies of test and simulation applied to vehicles from source until receiver in order to tackle noise and vibrations inside and outside.
Bharath Anantharamaiah
Bharath studied Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College of Engineering (affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University), Bangalore, India in 2011. He obtained his Master’s degree in Computer Aided Conception in Mechanical Engineering (2014) and General Mechanical Engineering (2017) from the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen), Germany.
Bharath has acquired profound knowledge in the Finite Element Method (FEM) and has a solid experience in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for automotive NVH, crash, safety and dynamics. This is also accompanied with the skills in material testing, analysis and modelling necessary for the projects.
Bharath is currently employed at Applus IDIADA, Santa Oliva, Spain as Marie Curie Research Engineer and will enroll as a PhD candidate at INSA Lyon, France. His research is directed towards the analysis of the tyre noise for a low speed automotive and the psychoacoustic perception of the noise for the enhancement of pedestrian safety.
Nimish Pandiya
Nimish obtained his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India in 2014 and his Master's from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in 2017. His Master's thesis was titled "Design and Validation of a MIMO Nonlinear Vibration Test Rig with Hardening Stiffness Characteristics in Multiple Degrees of Freedom" and dealt with creating a real system to measure nonlinearity in vibrations in a MIMO sense, for availability of spatial information for utilization in parameter estimation algorithms.
Nimish is currently employed at Robert-Bosch GmbH in Schwieberdingen, Germany as a MSCA Early Stage Researcher and will enroll as a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, Belgium. His research activity is directed towards vehicle component vibrational load characterization and mitigation.
Harald Devriendt
I'm a Belgian PhD student, originally from Overijse (near Brussels) who graduated in 2014 from KU Leuven as a Master in Mechanical Engineering. Before, I obtained a Bachelor in Bioscience engineering, also at KU Leuven in 2011. After my graduation, I worked for three years as an NVH analyst in Atlas Copco Airpower.
My current research is being performed at Goodyear Luxembourg, and will focus on methodologies for rough road noise prediction.
In my spare time, I like playing and listening to music, running, reading, hiking and cooking.
Andrea Bellotti
Andrea obtained his Master in Computer Science and Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in 2017. He worked on his Master's thesis at Camlin Italy, where he spent 10 months as an intern developing an embedded prototyping platform for Brain-Computer Interfaces.
He is currently employed as a PhD Trainee at Toyota Motor Europe (Belgium) and his research activity is focused on the application of Machine Learning techniques to build predictive models for comfort perception and safety recognition in relation to acounstic stimuli.