BSc, PhD, CEng, CITP, FHEA, FBCS, FIED, HFDS

Alex Duffy is a Professor of Systems Design, Director of the Computer Aided Design Centre, and currently Head of Department of Design Manufacture and Engineering Management, at the University of Strathclyde. His main research interests have been the application and development of artificial intelligence techniques in design, knowledge modelling and re-use, process optimisation, integrated systems, and design co-ordination/product development.

He has published over 200 articles and championed and co-ordinated the largest FP5 EU technology platform project (VRShips-ROPAX 2000) in distributed life-cycle management, worth 12M€, with 36 European partners, from 13 different European countries. He was one of five topic leaders on VIRTUE, an 18M€ EU project with 23 European partners working on integrated Computational Fluid Dynamics, one of four topic leaders on NECTISE (Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering) an £8.4M joint EPSRC and BAE Systems project involving 10 UK university partners, and was a partner in SAFEDOR an 18M€ EU project on Risk-Based design with 52 European partners.

To ensure industrial relevancy he developed an analysis tool to be used in companies in order to identify key target areas for performance improvement, strategic development and industry/academic collaboration. Industry have benefited with savings in process execution time of 64% and 45% resource cost reduction, metric reduction of process iterations of 51-76%, and with improvements of design modularity of 19-26%. Resulting tools are being used in six companies to improve process and system integration, management, and distributed working.

He has been the Vice-Dean of Research in the Faculty of Engineering at Strathclyde and he is a past Vice President and President of the Design Society, an international body encompassing all aspects and disciplines of design. He is the editor of the Journal of Engineering Design and on the editorial boards of the journals of Research in Engineering Design, Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Design Analysis and Manufacture, and International Journal of Engineering Management and Economics (IJEME). He has been on the advisory boards of numerous conferences and workshops including Artificial Intelligence in Design, Design to Manufacture in Modern Industry; Engineering Design Conference; International Conference in Engineering Design (ICED); Int. Symposium on Tools and Methods for Competitive Engineering; and World Conference on Soft Computing in Industrial Applications, and was a co-chair of ICED 2001 and chair of the 2nd International Conference in Design Creativity in 2012.