Rate My Professor Jan-Willem van Wingerden

Jan-Willem van Wingerden is a full professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), where he leads the Team Jan-Willem van Wingerden within the Delft Center for Systems and Control (DCSC) and is affiliated with the TU Delft Wind Energy Institute (DUWIND). Born on December 9, 1980, in Ridderkerk, The Netherlands, he received his M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering cum laude in 2004 and his Ph.D. degree cum laude in Control Engineering in 2008, both from TU Delft. His Ph.D. thesis, titled "Control of Wind Turbines with ‘Smart’ Rotors: Proof of Concept LPV Subspace Identification," developed control strategies and experimental validations for smart rotors using trailing edge flaps and piezoelectric actuators to mitigate vibrations in offshore wind turbines. He progressed from Assistant Professor at DCSC to full professor in 2017.

Van Wingerden's academic interests encompass data-driven control, nonlinear system identification for aeroelastic systems, smart dynamic wind turbine control, and wind farm control, including wake mixing, yaw control, and model predictive control to optimize power production and reduce loads. Key publications include "Wind plant power optimization through yaw control using a parametric model for wake effects—a CFD simulation study" (2016, 823 citations), "Evaluating techniques for redirecting turbine wakes using SOWFA" (2014, 537 citations), "Simulation comparison of wake mitigation control strategies for a two-turbine case" (2015, 405 citations), and "Long-term research challenges in wind energy—a research agenda by the European Academy of Wind Energy" (2016, 370 citations). His research has over 11,500 citations on Google Scholar. He received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Prize at the American Control Conference 2023, shared with colleagues, and has served as Editor for the journal Mechatronics since 2011. Van Wingerden supervises PhD theses on wind farm flow control and leads projects such as CLUSTERWAKE for active wind farm cluster wake mixing (2024-2028).