Members of the Board

Eero Lehtovaara, Chairman

Head of Regulatory & Public Affairs, ABB Marine & Ports (www.abb.com)

Eero Lehtovaara is Head of Regulatory & Public Affairs at ABB Marine & Ports. As a Master Mariner he takes a special interest in ship management and operating technology, including energy efficiency, bridge operations, navigation and autonomous ships.

Externally, Eero is ABB’s representative to an array of national, EU and global maritime agencies and NGOs. He is ABB delegate to: Sea Europe, the IMO Green Voyage 2050 Global Industry Alliance and many others. He currently chairs One Sea, the industry alliance on autonomous ships. He was instrumental in starting the CIMAC Working Group 21 on Azimuthing and non-conventional propulsion solutions. Eero Represents ABB in a number of classification societies committees like ABS, DNV and Lloyds Register. Mr. Lehtovaara also chairs the recently established CIMAC Digitalization Strategy Group.

Hermann-Josef Mammes, Vice-chairman

 Head of Research & Development, Meyer Werft (www.meyerwerft.de)

Herman-Joseff has studied mechanical engineering with the specialization for supply and discharge systems. Since 1987 he is working for Meyer Werft on the design and purchase of supply and discharge systems for cruise vessels. Since 2002 he became responsible for the specification and calculation of supply and discharge systems in the sales and design department. In this time, he was invovled in the EU Intership and BESST project as work package leader and looked also into the environmental aspects of the cruise ships design. At this time, he also was active in the IMO MEPC in the CESA Delegation.  

In July 2015, he became head of the Research and Development department of Meyer Werft and coordinates also the activities of the national and international associations regarding research and development. In 2017, he became chairman of the Research and Development Working Group of SEA Europe and Vice-Chair of the Waterborne Board. 

Åsa Burman, Vice-chair

Director, Lighthouse (www.lighthouse.nu)

Åsa Burman has twenty years of experience in leadership and management within the energy and maritime sector. Since 2015 she´s the director of the Swedish collaboration platform Lighthouse, which has a broad perspective on maritime research and innovation. This means that she’s been involved in technical matters, digitalization and automation but also in business economy, policy and regulations as well as human factors. The members of Lighthouse come from academia, research institutes, industries and from society.

Åsa has a Master of Science in chemical engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. After her studies, she began her career in the late 1980s as an engineer in the chemical process and energy sector. She has worked with energy production, with main technical knowledge in combustion and gasification, production and use of alternative fuels including transport fuels. She´s been involved in numerous small and large development and demonstration projects, both as a project manager or as a customer.

Prior to Lighthouse, Åsa worked for five years as Project Director and CEO for GoBiGas, a unique project to demonstrate gasification of forest residues in a large scale, owned by Göteborg Energi. Before the job as Project Director, Åsa held the position as Vice President at the Port of Gothenburg for five years and was responsible for all port authority related issues, including energy harbour, ferries and cruises, harbour master’s office and port security. Åsa Burman also has experience from board work and has during the last 15 years been a member of different boards, in companies as well as in associations.

Wilfried Lemmens, Member of the Board

Managing Director, Royal Belgian Shipowners' Association (www.brv.be)

Wilfried Lemmens is the Managing Director  of the Royal Belgian Shipowners’ Association. He sailed the oceans for 18 years, whereof 10 as captain on board of different types of vessels. After completing his MBA studies, Wilfried continued his career on shore as fleet manager with a third party ship manager, CEO of the Belgian Pilotage and COO of a French tanker company. Since 2015 he is managing director of the RBSA.

Dr. - Ing. Jochen Marzi, Member of the Board

Director Manger EU Research Relations, HSVA (https://www.hsva.de/), Chairman ECMAR Council (https://www.ecmar.eu/) 

Dr.-Ing. Jochen Marzi graduated in 1985 from Hamburg University as Dipl. Ing. Naval Architecture and received his PhD in 1988 from Technical University Hamburg Harburg. Since then he worked for a shipyard research establishment at Bremerhaven Germany, making first contacts with joint European Projects. In 1996 Jochen Marzi joined Hamburgische Schiffbau Versuchsanstalt - HSVA, working as a senior CFD engineer and project manager both in research and consultancy work, leading several large European projects such as the VIRTUE IP in FP 6 and HOLISHIP in Horizon 2020. He is now director EU research relations and responsible for the coordination of European Research at HSVA and active in several R&D projects dealing with CFD, Ship Design and Energy Efficiency. Jochen Marzi represents HSVA in the European Council for Maritime Applied R&D (ECMAR) and acts as Chairman since 2020.

Chiara Notaro, Member of the Board

Research Funding & Networking Department, Cetena (www.cetena.it) 

Chiara Notaro holds a degree in Naval Architecture from the University of Genova in Italy. Working in CETENA since 2005, she has been involved in engineering consulting activities related to ship's design optimisation and applied research, particularly in the field of manoeuvrability simulation studies of surface and underwater vessels. She is experienced in the technical management of activities performed under National and European funded projects and in testing and developing innovative applications for the maritime industry. She has also been involved in Transfer of Technology training activities, such as supporting technical courses for the Merchant Navy Cadets at the Italian Shipping Academy or collaborating with Fincantieri. In September 2020, she became a member of the council of ECMAR (European Council for Maritime Applied R&D), elected as Vice-Chair of the association. From July 2021, she is an elected member of the Scientific Technical Committee of the national cluster Blue Italian Growth (BIG), coordinating the working group for the shipyard and marine robotics fields.

Linden Coppell, Member of the Board

Director of Sustainability, MSC Cruises (www.msccruises.com)

As Director of Sustainability, Linden aims to ensure that MSC Cruises grows in a sustainable way. In this role, Linden works in collaboration with numerous internal and external partners. She established the Executive Chairman-led Sustainable Advisory Board, responsible for approving actions to meet the sustainability goals of the business and ensuring sustainability is embedded across the entire organisation.

She manages the publication of the annual MSC Cruises’ Sustainability Report and is currently involved in driving the decarbonisation strategy, as well as tracking and reporting sustainability actions and goals across the business. She represents the cruise line on several external programmes and initiatives including the Green Shipping Programme in Norway and the Waterborne Technology Platform.

With a strong focus on driving the development of sustainable alternative fuels for hard-to-abate sectors, Linden was a founding board member of the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium together with Boeing, the Masdar Institute and ADNOC. Whilst with the Etihad Aviation Group, she facilitated a flight powered using sustainable biomass grown and refined into jet fuel in the UAE, a first for the region.

Dr Reddy Devalapalli, FRINA, Member of the Board

Head of Strategic Research, Lloyd’s Register (www.lr.org)

Dr Reddy Devalapalli, FRINA, has more than thirty-five years of experience in the marine sector in the fields of experimental and numerical hydrodynamics, design and safety. He has graduated in Naval Architecture and Ship Building in 1986 from Cochin University of Science & Technology in India, received his MS in 1997 from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and PhD in 2001 from the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow, United Kingdom. After working for a couple of years in a shipyard, he had joined Indian Defence Research & Development Organisation in 1988 undertaking experimental hydrodynamic studies on ships and underwater bodies. Moved to Lloyd’s Register in UK in 2003 and is currently responsible to pursue long term application research into a broad range of novel, emerging and leading-edge technologies to meet the organisation’s business needs. He has been actively involved in several EU and Innovate UK projects, Co-operative Research Ships (CRS) working groups, JIPs including IACS/IMO studies on minimum power requirements. He represents Lloyd’s Register in different external forums and research groups and currently managing several government funded collaborative projects within Lloyd’s Register.

Nik Delmeire, Member of the Board

Coordinator, European Inland Waterway Transport Platform (www.inlandwaterwaytransport.eu)

Nik Delmeire, Belgian, obtained an MBA degree at the University of Leuven in 1982. From 1983 till 2014, he had several management positionis in Purchasing and Supply Chain at AGFA-GEVAERT, a Belgian multinational active in the world of imaging.

Through his role in AGFA's Supply Chain he got involved in the Belgian Shippers' Organisation called OTM. An organization he chaired from 2009 till 2015. He was vice-chairman of the European Shippers Council (ESC) from 2011 till October 2014. In October 2014, he joined ECS as Secretary-General. Since January 2019, he runs the newly established European Inland Waterway Transport Platform. A platform that aims at maximally improving the transportmode from the inside and making it a most attractive supply chain partner.

Vanessa CAUVIN, Member of the Board

European Collaborative R&D Director, NAVAL GROUP (www.naval-group.com)

Vanessa CAUVIN, Franco-German, is graduated from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, (Political Sciences) with a specialty in European relations and holds a master degree in Marketing applied to Industry and R&D.

From 2004 to 2011, she was Coordinator at GICAN (French Trade Maritime Industry Association) where she was in charge of improving the collaborations between members and for representing and supporting SMEs and Equipment Suppliers for cruise industry & merchant shipping in EU associations such as CESA & EMEC (now SEA EUROPE) and in WATERBORNE TP.

This work continued when she joined Naval Group in 2011: she has been responsible, until today, to coordinate upstream and downstream EU R&D activities with a significant track record: more than 15 projects awarded. She contributes today to the drafting of the EU R&D roadmaps and Strategic research agendas.