George Drakoulas, PhD
I sit between two worlds that rarely share a language: physics-based simulation and production machine learning. My work is making them talk to each other.
I did a PhD in physics, AI and engineering — simulating how physical structures behave, and building machine-learning surrogate models that ran up to 100× faster than the simulations they stood in for. Alongside and since, I've spent seven years putting machine learning into production for heavy industry, where a wrong answer has a cost measured in steel and schedule, not just a dashboard metric.
Today I work in maritime R&D at Damen, on the modelling and machine learning side — surrogate models for hydromechanics, predictive maintenance across sensor fleets, and tools that compress engineering work that used to take days.
Background
- PhD, Mechanical Engineering & Aeronautics — University of Patras (2021–2025)
- Integrated MEng, Mechanical Engineering — University of Patras, graduated top 2% of class
- Seven years of production ML across maritime, automotive and manufacturing — Damen, Toyota Motor Europe, and my own venture
Seven years across heavy industry
- Damen Shipyards
- Toyota Motor Europe
- FEAC Engineering
- University of Patras
- Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation
- Dalys.AI