Civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Dimitrios Kalliontzis was recently appointed to the 2026 University Marine Energy Research Community (UMERC) Board of Directors. UMERC, under the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), is a national organization that promotes marine energy in the United States. UMERC was founded in early 2021 by the WPTO to act as a unifying organization for marine energy research across US American universities.
“Wave Energy is one of the few renewable energy resources in the United States that remains largely untapped,” said Kalliontzis. “Most technologies are in their first steps of development and high levelized costs have so far inhibited wide adoption. However, harvesting only 1/10th of the available wave energy can cover nearly 6% of the electricity generation in the United States. These factors along with my background on multiphysics and fluid-structure interaction have motivated me to steer my attention toward wave energy.”
Kalliontzis’s research on wave energy has steadily increased with support from two recent DOE WPTO awards totaling over $600,000; his PhD student, Vasileios Kotzamanis, has been working on a project that "explores the energy capture of multimodal wave energy conversion on a fundamental scale that has not been investigated before.”
“Our research team has also developed a provisional patent on a wave energy converter that is intended to be mounted on retired offshore platforms in Gulf of America (GOA) to support the energy transition,” Kalliontzis added, further mentioning that his team is currently pursuing funding opportunities with local and national partners to “integrate wave energy conversion in GOA infrastructure systems that are seeking a new life purpose.”
After attending regular UMERC conferences since 2021, Kalliontzis wanted to become more involved in the organization’s mission and give back to the community, which led him to apply to join the Board of Directors for 2026.
“It was great news” to be selected, he said, “and I am honored to represent UH on a national level board that is linked to a major DOE program.”
This experience will complement his involvement in several other national committees and organizations since 2022, including the American Concrete Institute (ACI), with which he is an associated member of the ACI 357: Offshore and Marine Concrete Structures Committee. His membership in the 2026 UMERC Board of Directors will also help him connect with fellow faculty and industry stakeholders to pave new directions of education and R&D for the marine energy community and its workforce.