He is in no doubt about why he was chosen. ‘Alan Wells was Head of School. He had his eye on me because while I was an undergraduate I also had my own powerboat-building business. Apart from being a civil engineer, I’m also a naval architect. He reckoned these interests would work well.’

These days Trevor is Professor of Coastal Engineering and has become a leading international figure in the world of wave energy.

As he points out, in those early years, Queen’s was not at the forefront. Wells was having some initial ideas. He would go on to create the Wells Turbine which always rotates one way, despite the direction of the air flow. Trevor even has a mini version on his desk and will happily blow into it to demonstrate.

‘The whole enterprise has really grown since then, as has the University’s reputation in this field. There are two wave tanks, one in Belfast and one in Portaferry. To date I have supervised 24 PhD students, with another seven on the books at various stages of completion. The team itself is bigger. Within Queen’s and affiliated to the group there are 24 people involved.

‘But our main claim to fame is the number of working prototypes we have around the world. This is a unique form of applied research.

‘We were recognised from an early stage as people who meant business in this field, being part of the UK wave energy programme in the late 70s and early 80s. We got some very big grants and we made our mark as one of seven teams designing a power station for the Western Isles of Scotland.’

Other commercial applications included wave-powered navigation buoys. Then came Limpet, a shoreline"We were recognised from an early stage as people who meant business." energy converter, in partnership with the company Wavegen, and currently the Oyster project, a collaboration with marine energy firm Aquamarine Power.

‘The Oyster concept started because I was having ideas about alternative ways of generating electricity with shoreline devices, working directly with the movement of a body in the waves instead of with oscillating water columns driving an air turbine. So we looked at doing away with all the structure and interacting directly with the surging water in the near-shore zone.

‘We applied to EPSRC and got two back-to-back grants, working along with staff at Manchester Metropolitan University who are experts in numerical modelling of coastal processes. In 2005, a Scottish entrepreneur came to me with a proposal for developing Oyster commercially. And so he founded Aquamarine purely for that purpose.

‘We’re going from strength to strength. This year alone we have another three big research grants. Aquamarine employs two staff at Queen’s and a lot of the work done in the tank here is development work for the company. It suits everyone.’

Trevor is constantly asked for his views on world energy problems. ‘There is no single panacea. What you need is diversity of supply. Wave is a part of the mix – a very big part. The amount of energy available off the western coast of Europe is 17 per cent of its total energy demand. You could never extract the full 17 per cent but if you produce a proportion of it, then that’s a huge industry making a valuable contribution to reducing carbon emissions.

‘Educating students is our primary business. But here they can work on real projects. There’s nothing hypothetical about it. I’m not a pure out-and-out academic. I’m an applied academic. My strap line – research excellence towards commercial development. That sums us up. That’s what we do.’

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