On 1 October 2018, Bo Cerup-Simonsen will take up the position of Vice President of Newbuild Strategy and Portfolio at Royal Caribbean Cruises. Morten Jeppesen, Programme Director at the Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre, has temporarily been appointed centre director, and a process for finding a new centre director will be launched as soon as possible.
Bo Cerup-Simonsen has been involved from the outset, and in the course of the centre’s first four years, he has headed the establishment of a strategy and a well-functioning interdisciplinary organization with some 200 employees and a programme portfolio of more than 20 prototypes of new research-based solutions which can significantly improve oil/gas extraction for Denmark. Bo Cerup-Simonsen has also secured and nurtured the collaboration between the centre’s many partners and stakeholders, including Aarhus University, Aalborg University, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), and the University of Copenhagen as well as the Danish Underground Consortium ((DUC) with Nordsøfonden, Total, Shell, and Chevron as partners).
In spring 2018, the French energy company Total S.A. took over the role of operator in relation to the extraction of oil in the Danish part of the North Sea from Maersk Oil.
“As Bo is leaving us, [SFK1]we feel that this is as good a time as any to let a new centre director build on the foundation which has been created for pursuing identified and new potential,” says Provost Rasmus Larsen, who also thanks Bo Cerup-Simonsen for his hard work of placing the centre’s activities into a wider social context:
“Bo has skilfully headed the building of capacity at the centre from zero to a powerful organization at the interface between applied research and application. Moreover, Bo has again and again eloquently explained the necessity of conducting research into improved utilization of resources in the Danish underground, so that Denmark has the energy required to ensure growth and welfare in the transitional period until the fossil-free society becomes a reality.”
By Rasmus Larsen, Executive Vice President, Provost, DTU