That is the conclusion drawn by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries in its proposal for the 2019 Government budget. The ministry confirms that the government will now choose a development concept and clarify the framework for the project. 

— It is very positive that the ministry has expressed itself in such a way in the budget proposal.  After we delivered the revised concept in March, we have had a very productive dialog with the ministry and the quality control, and we are very happy to learn that they think the project is ready for further development, says CEO of SINTEF Ocean, Vegar Johansen.

The head of the Department for Marine Technology at NTNU, Sverre Steen, says that this confirmation is something that he and the department have been waiting patiently for.

— We are looking forward to completing the laboratories and teaching facilities of tomorrow. NTNU and SINTEF are already leading the international field in marine technology, and Ocean Space Center is vital in order to preserve and strengthen this position.

NTNU and SINTEF have not yet been informed about the details of the cost benefit analysis by the minisstry, but are expecting to learn more soon.

The revised concept for Ocean Space Center contains flexible solutions that are suitable for a wider market, and it managed to cut the costs of the project considerably. The cost is now estimated to be 4.7 billion NOK.

Read more about the revised concept here (document in Norwegian). 

NTNU has previously received positive assessments of their planned laboratories, but the university supports the process of revising the concept in order to make it more suited to a rapidly changing world.

— The Norwegian Government’s commitment to the Oceans and corresponding technology are important if we are to maintain our position internationally. In order to develop further, we need facilities that increase the quality of the teaching and scientific work that is in demand. As of today, we do not have that. The project that now is greenlit will maintain the necessary development in knowledge for both students, science and business, says Olav Bolland, dean at the Faculty of Engineering at NTNU.

Read the department’s budget proposal here (document in Norwegian).

Students from nine different universities across Japan attended the Summer School at IMT.

The school is a part of an initiative by Nippon Foundation to strengthen the competence in ocean engineering in Japan. The students are offered a varied program, with lectures, exercises, laboratory, and field trips.

This year's Summer School was organized by Amir Nejad with supports from many of the staff at IMT as well as colleagues at NTNU Ålesund.  

In August a group of seven delegates from State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmissions at Chongqing University in China visited Marine Technology Department.

Visits such as these help lay the groundwork for further collaboration and cooperation on important resarch questions. 

The group was led by Professor Zhu Caichao, the Executive Dean at Institute of Scientific Research and Development and Director of the State Key Lab. The delegates were welcomed by Amir Nejad at IMT.  

The project is a collaboration between Rolls­ Royce Marine, NTNU Department of Marine Technology, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, Runde Environmental Center, Fjord Shipping, and Nortek.

Read more about the project at Sunnmørsposten here.

The project aims to share experience and develop proposals for further collaboration. It also aims to boost the educational offerings in the topics of stochastic dynamics and multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) for offshore wind turbines, and energy systems for ships, ports, and offshore structures.

Both the development of offshore wind turbines and more efficient energy systems for ships, ports and other marine structures, are of vital importance if one is the solve some of the problems facing the world, like climate change and energy production. It is the hope that this collaboration will help strengthen today’s research activities to solve these challenges, and educate engineers and scientists to address tomorrow’s challenges.  

The collaboration will entail regular workshops and seminars, joint applications for research funding, bilateral research exchanges, joint publications, and mutually beneficial course development at the bachelor and master’s levels.

The first workshop will be held 15-16 October in Trondheim.

The ESREL conferanse is the largest safety and reliability conference in Europe, and it was a huge success with about 400 papers submitted and 500 participants from all over the world.

The topic for ESREL 2018 was “Safe Societies in a Changing World” and IMT's ambition for the conference was to advance the understanding, modeling, and management of the complexity of the risk, safety and reliability fields characterizing our world, both now and in the future.

With the support of NTNU, the conference engaged in broadening the scope of risk, safety and reliability from the technical to natural, financial and social aspects, focusing on inter-dependencies of functions and cascade of failures in complex systems.

The budding marine engineers were welcomed by deputy head for education at the department, Eilif Pedersen on Tuesday. Head of the department, Sverre Steen, held his welcome speech on Wednesday, where he told the new students that the world needs their expertise, creativity and enthusiasm in the coming years.

There are many challenges facing both Norway and the world, among others, food shortages, energy production and pollution, and proper application of marine technology will be instrumental in tackling many of them. IMT is therefore very happy to welcome a new class of young, talented and enthusiastic students, which we hope will contribute to solving these challenges.

On August 8. Xia Guihua, Wen-Yang Duan and Zhu Qidan from Harbin Engineering University, China, visited the department to discuss research cooperation and our participation in the International Innovation and Cooperation in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Alliance (ICNAME).

Harbing Engineering University is among the top three universites in China within the field of Marine Technology, and IMT were very happy to welcome the three representatives to NTNU and Trondheim.   

Associate professor at IMT, Josef Kiendl, was identified as a 2017 Highly Cited Researcher for ranking among the top 1% top researchers for most cited documents in Computer Science, according to Web of Science.

Kiendl is one of four researchers at NTNU, and one of only twelve researchers in Norway who got the Highly Cited Researcher Award in 2017.

The recognition is awarded by Clarivate Analytics to scientists who ranks among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents within a given field, and is based on the publication citations on Web Of Science.

For more see Clarivate Analytic's pages here.

Master students Øyvind Stokke, Jon Magnus Moen, Vilde Eirin Eidsæther Bruun, Kristoffer Fjellvikås Solvik, Ingunn Salvesen Haldorsen, and Thea Lefdal Kvalheim told festivalgoers about all the exciting opportunities for studies and research at IMT, and arranged quizzes for both children and adults.  

The students were present in order to recruit potential new students who is looking for a career within the field of Marin Technology, as well as inform the general public about what IMT is all about.  After watching the students in action, it was obvious that the IMT could not have asked for better ambassadors.       

Using multiple autonomous vehicles simultaneously, an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers has returned to the United States after exploring the North Pacific Subtropical front - a sharp boundary where cold fresh waters from the north meet warm salty waters from the south.

Amongst the vehicles used were underwater robots developed by the Department of Marin Technology at NTNU.

The goal of the project was to demonstrate the use of distributed autonomous robotics to detect, track, and characterize these complex and dynamic processes with high accuracy across large spatial and temporal scales.

Professor Martin Ludvigsen at IMT hopes that this new way of mapping the oceans will help solve some of the big challenges that the oceans face.

– We hope that by using multiple cooperating autonomous vehicles, we can greatly increase our knowledge of the oceans, ultimately helping us to solve some of the issues that affects them, like climate change, pollution, and unsustainable fishing.

In less than three weeks, the underwater robots travelled over 1,000 nautical miles for approximately 500 hours, while the autonomous surface vehicles operated continuously, and the unmanned aerial vehicles performed over 25 flights totaling 10 hours.

The data that the expedition collected, and the experience gained, will also be of use in waters closer to Norway.

– The technical results for this expedition are also valuable for NTNU’s exploration of the upper water column in Norwegian and arctic waters. I think this clearly underlines the importance of this kind of collaboration between researchers, says Ludvigsen.