Congratulations Libby Freeman – PIANC De Paepe-Willems Winner 2022!

Congratulations to Libby Freeman, who having recently completed her postgraduate studies at WRL, has now been awarded the prestigious PIANC De Paepe-Willems Award for 2022.  

The PIANC De Paepe-Willems Award is an excellent way for young professionals to be recognised internationally for their technical endeavours in the field of waterborne transport or related marine infrastructure. Libby presented her winning submission, ‘Dynamic motions of piled floating pontoons and their impact on postural stability’ to the PIANC International Annual General Assembly held in Liège (Belgium), earlier this month. 

Her research completed at WRL, developed a set of safe motion limit criteria, acceleration and rotation limits, in order to guide engineers to design better and more stable pontoons by investigating how the pontoon dimensions influence motion response. She also examined how pontoon beam and draft affect wave attenuation performance.

Libby is only the third person from the Australia/NewZealand region to win the De Paepe-Willems Award; and the second with ties to WRL; with A/Prof William Glamore receiving the award in 2008 for – ‘A decision support tool for assessing the impact of boat wake waves on inland waterways’. 

Based in regional NSW, Libby is currently a Senior Coastal Engineer at Advisian, with over 16 years industry experience in the fields of coastal and maritime engineering and has worked on a range of projects both locally and internationally.

Original post by Mary O'Connell on the PIANC Australia & New Zealand website: https://pianc.org.au/pianc-news/congratulations-libby-freeman-de-paepe-willems-winner-2022/