Academic Staff

Dr Nishino’s expertise is in the areas of fluid mechanics and offshore renewable energy. After his PhD in aerodynamics at the University of Southampton in 2007, he received a prestigious NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) fellowship to spend three years at NASA Ames Research Center in the US. At NASA, he learnt a variety of advanced modelling techniques for complex turbulent flow simulations, largely through collaborative research with the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) at Stanford University.

He came back to the UK in 2011 to take another three-year postdoc position at the University of Oxford, where he started research in offshore renewable energy. His major achievement during this time was the development of multi-scale flow models to predict the efficiency of a large cluster of tidal-stream turbines. In particular, he mathematically derived a new theoretical upper limit of 79.8% for the efficiency of an isolated cross-stream array of turbines (Nishino & Willden 2012, J. Fluid Mech. 708) compared to the classical "Betz limit" of 59.3% for a single isolated turbine.

After the long and productive postdoc period, Dr Nishino took a Lectureship in Fluid Mechanics at Cranfield University in 2014. At Cranfield, he extended and applied his multi-scale flow analysis to the modelling of large wind farms, partly in collaboration with the UK Met Office. He also taught aero/hydrodynamics and CFD (turbulence modelling) to graduates, supervised a number of student projects in the field of offshore renewable, and served as the director of two renewable energy MSc courses at Cranfield.

In 2018, he returned to the University of Oxford to take a Departmental Lectureship in Civil Engineering Fluid Mechanics to further extend his research in wind energy. Since then, he has been developing a novel physics-based approach for fully coupled wind turbine/farm optimisation, by combining his "two-scale momentum theory" for large wind farms (Nishino & Dunstan 2020, J. Fluid Mech. 894) with a regional-scale numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. He has also proposed how to quantify the "extractability" of wind, which determines an upper limit to the efficiency of large wind farms.

In 2023, he received an Outstanding Research Supervision award from the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division of the University of Oxford. 

Postgraduate Research Students

Undergraduate Project Students

Former Members (Oxford)

  Marcus Juniper (DPhil student, 2019-23, now scientist at the UK Met Office)     DPhil thesis

  Duncan Law (MEng project, 2022/23)     CFD study of offshore wind power extractability

  Michael Farrell (MEng project, 2022/23)     Understanding vortex dynamics for power generation  -  co-supervised

  Morten Pahus (MEng project, 2022/23)     Wind farm optimisation considering wind extractability

  Joseph Ashton (MEng project, 2021/22)     Analysis of wind farm momentum availability factor

  Leila Legris (MEng project, 2021/22)     Mitigation of blockage-induced wind farm power losses

  Kelan Patel (MEng project, 2020/21)     Atmospheric response to a large offshore wind farm

  Avanish Parmessur (MEng project, 2019/20)     Blockage effect in a large dense wind farm

  Ching Hong Fung (Summer project, 2 months in 2021)     Meteorological data analysis for a large wind farm

Former Members (Cranfield)

   Dr Pierre-Luc Delafin (Postdoc, 2015-17, now lecturer at Grenoble-INP)

   Lun Ma (EngD student, 2016-18)     Fluid mechanics of large turbine arrays

   Dajun Liu (PhD student, 2015-18)     Detailed flow physics of a pitching airfoil

   Rodrigo Fisher (PhD student, 2014-18)     CFD study of novel synthetic jets

   Luca Manni (Visiting PhD student from Univ.of Rome II, 5 months in 2015)     2D/3D transition in separated airfoil flows

   Alessandro Vernola (Visiting MSc student from Univ.of Pisa, 6 months in 2015)     CFD study of offshore VAWT

   Edoardo Cicirello (Visiting MSc student from Univ.of Pisa, 6 months in 2015/16)     Floating offshore VAWT

   Giulio Riccardi (MSc project, 2017)     Efficiency of doubly staggered wind turbine arrays

   Laurie Gilbert (MSc project, 2017)     Climate impacts on offshore wind farm installation  -  Internship*

   Melanie Ducros (MSc project, 2017)     Tidal turbine impacts on marine wildlife  -  Internship*

   Mohamad Sadek (MSc project, 2017)     CFD study of vertical-axis tidal turbines

   Pierre Lhote (MSc project, 2017)     Wind farm size effects on aerodynamic efficiency

   Toshimitsu Murai (MSc project, 2017)     LES of large wind farms with complex ABL  -  Internship*

   Vilavanh Thammavongs (MSc project, 2017)     Interaction of two cross-flow tidal turbines

   Alejandro Zapata (MSc project, 2016)     Aerodynamics of very large wind farms

   Gregory Shirley (MSc project, 2016)     Aerodynamic interaction of two wind turbines

   Henry Wanogho (MSc project, 2016)     Vertical-axis turbine with active pitch control

   Thibault Venant (MSc project, 2016)     CFD study of aircraft wing-body junction flows

   Thomas Puiseux (MSc project, 2016)     Experimental and CFD study of blood flows  -  Internship*

   Weihao Xu (MSc project, 2016)     Dense array of vertical-axis wind turbines

   Abubakar-Sadiq Abubakar (MSc project, 2015)     Dynamic response analysis of S-lay pipeline

   Audrey Varing (MSc project, 2015)     Met-ocean data analysis for marine energy  -  Internship*

   Emily Manchester (MSc project, 2015)     CFD study of a bumpy leading edge airfoil

   Filiberto Tartari (MSc project, 2015)     Local blockage effect for wind turbine arrays

   Pierre Kohl (MSc project, 2015)     Unsteady aerodynamics of a pitching airfoil

   Ruiwen Zhao (MSc project, 2015)     Tidal fence performance over an undulating seabed

   Anthony Bonnardel (MSc project, 2014)     CFD study of a wing in ground effect

   Edgar Perez-Campos (MSc project, 2014)     CFD study of marine turbine arrays

   Victorien Chatelain (MSc project, 2014)     CFD study of wind turbine arrays

*supervised mainly by external experts