THE SIMITIS BLOG

Costas Simitis, PM of Greece 1996-2004: 

The man who left a significant political legacy and put Greece in the Eurozone. He also played a critical role for the accession of Cyprus to the EU. 

For me personally, he was the man responsible for my 5 ½ year tenure as CEO of the port of Piraeus (1996-2002). This has been the non-academic part -but surely an important part- of my overall professional career*. 

He was not afraid to pick someone who had zero connections to the political establishment (including himself) and zero prior experience in running a port. 

I am grateful for the opportunity and for his support. May he rest in peace.

* More on Piraeus when I was there can be found HERE.

THE GEOMETRY BLOG

Among the numerous scientific topics that I have dealt with in my academic career (thus far), which one do I like the best? The answer may surprise you.

GEOMETRY!

I have NEVER published a paper on geometry. I have only taken courses in geometry in high school and during my early undergraduate studies.

Was I good at geometry? I can not claim that I was a superstar, however I was not stupid either. I owe this to some teachers and professors who were brilliant enough for me to get interested.

I can still remember the geometry question in the 1969 contest of the Hellenic Mathematical Society (HMS), which went as follows:

Let AB be a given arc on a known circle, which is less than half a circle, C any point on that arc and E a point on the linear  segment AC such that (AE) = (2/3)(BC). Prove that as C moves on arc AB, the locus of point E is a known line (curve). 

(Note: let me know if you want to know the solution)

I also remember the statement of the President of the HMS Aristides Pallas that young people should be more interested in mathematics than in the Beatles.

1969 was my last year in high school and later that year (after that contest) I was accepted (after exams that also involved geometry, among many others) at the National Technical University of  Athens (NTUA) for my undergraduate studies.

I got an award in the HMS contest (which also included a question in algebra and one in trigonometry), but not the top one. I do not remember the geometry problems of the NTUA exams, nor do I remember the algebra and trigonometry problems of the HMS contest.

The pic below is from the HMS 1969 award ceremony, including Aristides Pallas (second from left), other luminaries, and other award recipients. Can you spot me in it?

My NTUA studies (in naval architecture and marine engineering) included projective geometry and some non-Euclidean geometry topics. I have forgotten most of them. Courses in marine hydrostatics and ship design had some geometrical content.

Later at MIT, when I switched to operations research, I encountered problems in graph theory which also had some geometrical content. For instance, Euler’s Seven bridges of Koenigsberg problem and the Chinese Postman problem. Also the vehicle routing problems that I dealt with in my PhD thesis as well as afterwards had some geometry content. My most exciting project at MIT was a project to develop graphics software for mathematical optimization courses on campus. I liked graphics because I liked geometry.

I may also say that the fact that I like (and practice) painting MAY be connected to the fact that I like geometry.

Why do I like geometry?  

Because it is a no nonsense, no-bullshit (no-BS) discipline. There are no “ifs, ands, or buts” in geometry. There is nothing more scientifically rigorous (and, I would say, mentally exhilarating) than proving a geometric property, or theorem.

A very simple example of the beauty of geometry is the 9-point circle, also known as Euler’s circle, which is a circle that, for any given triangle, passes through (a) the midpoint of each edge of the triangle, (b) the foot of each of the altitudes, and (c) the midpoint of the line segment from each vertex of the triangle to the orthocenter (where the 3 altitudes meet), as shown in the figure below.

For the fascinating properties of the 9-point circle (there are many), and for many more in geometry, there are no ifs, ands, or buts. No one can challenge them with squishy, BS arguments. BS has zero value here.

Geometry is not the only no-BS discipline. Mathematics, physics, and many engineering disciplines also have this property. I only mentioned geometry because I like it very much.  

Unfortunately, “no-BS” is not the case with some other topics. I have encountered such topics in my academic career (thus far), and the question which one may be the worst is a tough one. Yet, I would venture my opinion, and it is the following one:

 

SCROLL DOWN

 

SCROLL DOWN

 

SCROLL DOWN

 

 

 

 

SCROLL DOWN

 

 

 

 

SCROLL DOWN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCROLL DOWN!!

AND THE ANSWER IS....

DECARBONIZE SHIPPING!

Decarbonization of shipping (read: maritime transport) involves efforts to reduce greenhouse (GHG) emissions from ships all the way to “net zero”, as per policy decisions at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency tasked to regulate shipping. These emissions are currently around 3% of all anthropogenic GHG emissions and on the order of 1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.

This happens to be the area, among many others, in which I (either alone or with several co-authors) have channeled most of my research energy over the last 15 or so years and published most of my recent papers and other publications, outcomes of funded and non-funded research. These publications are (depending on what counts) over 60. My co-authors and I did our very best to publish in good peer reviewed journals, and most of these are considered top journals. We also did our very best to make our methods and models transparent and make concrete and non-fuzzy recommendations, useful to industry and policy-makers alike. I actually invite anybody to read these papers and challenge the above statement, which may obviously entail some personal bias.

To be fair, shipping decarbonization is not a pure discipline like geometry. It involves an array of many interlinked topics, including various areas of engineering, various areas of economics, various areas of environmental sciences, and various areas of law and regulation. It also engages a rather wide and diverse set of stakeholders, who have multiple and many times conflicting interests. So there is no Euclid or Euler here, and there are few or no “no-BS” theorems.

The objective to decarbonize shipping is a laudable one. But it would seem self-evident that any plan to achieve that goal should be based on a combination of two basic prerequisites: 

(a) a strong political will and 

(b) sound and solid scientific results, that would allow policy makers to know where we stand and to rigorously evaluate alternatives and their impact before making policy decisions on where we should go.

Yet, and in spite of lots of discussions and good intent by some people, sadly we are a long way to securing prerequisites (a) and (b) above. By and large, the process is plagued by the following deficiencies (list below is only indicative, and order is random):

1.   GHG emissions estimates are purely based on modelling, but the intricate models that are used by the IMO are non-transparent and involve billions of assumptions, several of which are hidden and/or dubious.

2.  Much of the policy process is driven by studies that are also based on non-transparent models, which have undergone only superficial peer review, or no peer review whatsoever.

3.  Instant credibility is given by media (social or other) to many of the studies that are mentioned in #2.

4.  The decision making process is highly political with lack of consensus on key issues.

5.  Key responsibilities are placed on wrong stakeholders (for instance ship owners instead of shipbuilders or fuel producers).

6.   Decarbonization indices (such as EEDI, EEXI, AER, EEOI) are dubious and may actually increase GHG emissions. 

7.    Guiding principles at the IMO (CBDR, NMFT) are conflicting.

8.    Lack of consensus leads to deliberate fuzziness on key decisions.

9.  Many of those decisions, fuzzy as these may be, are based on the lowest common denominator.

10.  Lack of sound governance and transparency principles pervades the IMO policy making process.

11.  Regional measures (eg EU ETS) may create distortions, loopholes and risk of carbon leakage.

And then, it got suddenly much worse!

THE FINAL NAIL IN THE SHIPPING DECARBONIZATION COFFIN: The outcome of the 2024 US Presidential election.

Trump is a sworn denier of climate change. Under him it is inconceivable that the US will agree to any form of carbon pricing (or levy) to reduce GHG emissions, which is in my opinion, the only way forward. The US did not agree to it under the Biden administration either, even though they were surely more proactive than under Trump 2016-2020 (note: the US did not agree to the IMO 2018 Initial Strategy). China and a bunch of other countries do not agree to carbon pricing either. They never did, and are adamant against it. That makes the prospect of any sensible agreement by 2025, the year the IMO is supposed to agree on how to achieve net 0 by 2050,  all but impossible. 

The key word above is "sensible". Any agreement that does not include a substantial carbon levy is not, in my opinion, sensible. 

So here is how I think it looks, sadly (obviously I hope I am wrong): 

So for the time being, and as far as I am concerned, I prefer geometry.

PS (Dec. 2025) 

Was I a prophet? 

See HERE

 

AM I A PAINTER?

The purpose of this blog is to shed some light into my (amateur and less than illustrious) painting career. I will show you some paintings of mine. 

Note: the real paintings are much better, and what is shown here does not reveal the dimensions of the paintings.

THE EARLY DAYS

My painting career started when I was around 11 (1962), by copying, together with my father, the following Vincent Van Gogh painting:

THE COPY

 

THE ORIGINAL

Then we painted together this ship, named BREMEN. I do not have a pic of the original.

About a year later, when I was 12, I painted this ship alone (again, no pic of the original):

Then there was a painting of 4 Minoan fishermen that regrettably was lost (but see later). 

Then there was this Clipper painting, probably the Cutty Sark, which I recently fished out. Date is unknown, but it was done probably when I was in high school, mid 60s. I had it in my room in my parents' house in Athens, and it was packed for the last 15 years or so.

THE MIT DAYS

When I was a graduate student at MIT, and just before I took my Doctoral exams (1976, age 25), I started copying the Claude Monet painting, "le train dans la neige". 

But I did only 2/3 of the painting (the left hand side), and left the rest undone. I completed it 13 years later, when I had returned to Greece (1989, age 38).

COPY

ORIGINAL

THE NORDIC DAYS

There was a huge gap (31 years) between 1989 and 2020, when I resumed painting, in the middle of Covid. It was another Claude Monet painting, showing sunrise in the port of Le Havre. Age: 69. 

COPY

ORIGINAL

Then, in 2021 (age: 70), I experimented with a number of paintings, mostly NOT copies, but I drew whatever came to my mind, in a quasi-random fashion.

The pic above is a free-lance copy of the following photo, which I took in 1963, when I was 12. The silhouette that you see is my father. The setting: sunset off cape Sounion, onboard SS Limnos, going to Sifnos. I took the photo with a Kodak Brownie, and apparently it was so good that it was published in EIKONES, a magazine. Big discussion on Facebook: is my father looking at me, or at the sea? I do not know the answer. 

Then, here is some fish!

Painting a containership was a challenge. All lines parallel to the center-line of the ship converge to a point on the horizon. The name of the ship is SHANE.

Then we move into 2022, age 71. The one below is a random set of geometrical segments.

Then I decided to redo the Minoan fishermen that I did when I was a child and which were lost, this time three of them. They are three separate paintings.

The one below is kind of crazy,

The building in the one below is inspired by my house in Sifnos, however the colors and the background with the sea are different.

The one below is a liberal rendition of Kamares (Sifnos) from Agios Symeon.

The one below is inspired from Faros (Sifnos). This was done in 2023.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST!

The one below maybe is boring. The number of distinct colors is 17. This is, to date, my most recent painting, done in the fall of 2023.

Where are these paintings? Except the train and the clipper, which are in Athens, all are in Sifnos*. All Nordic paintings are acrylic, everything else is oil.

*The number of paintings in the Sifnos house is about 90. Except for the above, the rest was done by my father, who was a better painter than me, and far more prolific. There are many more paintings by him, in other places. 

CITATIONS MADNESS CONTINUES

The Scream, by E. Munch

It's that time of the year. The 2024 edition of the Stanford/Elsevier top 2% scientists database has been released on Aug. 1, 2024, going up to year 2023. The selection is based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above in their sub-field. The c-score is a composite index based on as many as 40 different citation data for each scientist. The database actually contains entries for more than 200,000 people. See HERE.

I spotted the release a couple of days ago by accident (last year's edition came later, in Oct. 2023), and I announced it on Facebook with a concise statement of my own stats, which are as follows:

As in previous years, my own primary sub-field is Logistics & Transportation (L&T), and I am globally ranked No. 34 for this sub-field on a career basis, and No. 22 on a single year (2023) basis. Last year's numbers were No. 37 and No. 25 respectively, recording a marginal improvement over the years (a few years before I was No. 39). This improvement is perhaps a surprise, given that (at least on paper) I have been working part time for about 3 years now. I also retired fully on 31.12.2023, so I expect that at some point in time my stats will begin to be abysmally bad.

On a career basis: The number of scientists of 5 or more citations rose to 10,257,575 in 2023, up from 9,617,763 in 2022. Of those, 28,891 people have L&T as their primary sub-field (up from 26,803 in 2022). Of the 28,891, the number of L&T scientists in the database (excel) that one can download is 562, and those in the top 100,000 are 153.

Dividing 34 by 28,891 yields 0.001177 or about 0.12%, which means that I am in the top 0.12% of my subfield, on a career basis. That number was 0.14% last year and 0.16% a couple of years before. Quite honestly, I was expecting that number to go up, not down, and I realize that variation in all these numbers is within the realm of statistical noise. 

What is the importance of these numbers? I honestly do not know, and I have expressed my views on citations on numerous occasions before, see HERE for various blogs. I still remember a colleague boasting his own accomplishments,  inferring that since he was globally No. 20 or so on "WIDGET A analysis", he was the top influencer (globally No. 1) on "WIDGET B analysis", with "WIDGET A analysis" being a legitimate subfield in the Stanford/Elsevier database, whereas "WIDGET B analysis" was undefined in that database and was not necessarily a subset of "WIDGET A analysis". In a blog, I explained the fallacy of that reasoning. 

I have stopped having a Linked-In account since Jan. 2024 (I have not regretted it), so I have missed similar statements this year. But obviously, kudos are due to all people in the database. 

Irrespective of all this, I have the impression that bibliometrics is fast becoming a perversion, and that quite honestly it is way over-rated as a means to evaluate academic excellence. 

Other things are more important. 

Farewell Party Gallery

DTU, 18 Jan. 2024 (notice the snow outside)

Master of ceremonies: Allan Larsen.

Looking at that railway book

with Jasmine Lam and Parsa Parvasi

Aleka with Sotiria Lagouvardou

with Oli Madsen and David Pisinger

with Erik Styhr Petersen

with Harry Bingham

with Vasiliki Zisi, Nicolas Campion and Baptiste Coutton

with Mette Sanne Hansen

with Poul Woodall

Thank you for the gifts

VIDEOS

MY SPEECH:

I would like 1^st of all to thank Allan and Jesper for organizing this event and all of you for coming.

For me, this is a bit of a bittersweet occasion. On the one hand I feel sad that my active time at DTU and of all my academic career has ended. On the other hand I feel a sense of satisfaction that it went generally well. My academic career started close to 45 yrs ago, when I started as an Assistant Prof. at MIT (1979). 10 years later I moved to Greece and NTUA (1989) and I came to DTU after 24 years, in 2013. In between, I spent 5.5 years as CEO of the port of Piraeus.

Incidentally, DTU was not my 1^st collaboration with Denmark. That one started around 1990 (approx. 35 yrs ago), in the context of preparing the ATOMOS project, an EU project of which most partners were from Denmark. ATOMOS was my 1^st EU project, which started in 1992. There were as many as 4 editions of ATOMOS, which ended in 2003, and as many as 25 EU projects overall. 

My 1^st link with DTU was when Oli Madsen visited MIT for his sabbatical in 1986, ie some 38 yrs ago. Obviously at that point in time I would never imagine that I would come to DTU!

 So it has been quite a journey, and I am happy that DTU was associated with the last part of my active career. I am grateful for the opportunity, and I want to thank all colleagues, students, and the management of the Department for their excellent collaboration.

 What happens next? It is unlikely I will completely shut down, even though obviously it will not be at the same pace as before. I may still write a paper from time to time. I will also occasionally come to see you guys, and attend the cake meetings, which I will miss very much.

Thank you again.

PS for a look at my career, see HERE

 

 

AWARD PICTURE GALLERY

Random pictures from some awards that I have received.  For full list see HERE.

1969, Honorary Award, contest of the Hellenic Mathematical Society. Can you spot me in the pic?

(more on that contest HERE) 

1979, Henry L. Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization, MIT Sea Grant (1979-1981). From L to R: Ira Dyer, Alfred Keil, Robert Seamans, HNP, Walter Rosenblith, Dean Horn. 

1979, First Prize, PhD dissertation contest, Transportation Science Section of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA). From L to R: John Little, Richard Rothery, HNP. 

2010, the second Lloyds List award to the NTUA Lab for Maritime Transport (LMT). With David Moorehouse, CBE. 

The two Lloyds List awards to NTUA LMT (2008 and 2010)

2011, Eykranti award for the best representation of the Greek Shipping Industry (together with P. Zachariadis). From L to R: HNP, Panos Zachariadis, Vasileios Tselentis, Costas Chlomoudis.

2019, MEL Palgrave MacMillan IAME 2019 best conference paper award for paper “Speed optimization vs speed reduction: the speed limit debate”, IAME 2019 conference, Athens, Greece.

2019, IAME 2019 Conference Best Reviewer Award. With Manolis Kavussanos.

2021 Green4SEA Personality Award (video). Presented by Athena Kanellatou.

2022 Confederation of European Maritime Technology Societies Award

Cleaner Logistics and Supply Chain- Best Research Article Award 2023 for paper "Ship speed vs power or fuel consumption: are laws of physics still valid? Regression analysis pitfalls and misguided policy implications."