Désirée Plenker

Senior Advisor and Researcher Offshore Engineering, Deltares

Désirée Plenker is a civil engineer with versatile experience in the field on hydraulic and geotechnical engineering. She successfully completed her studies at the Technical University Aachen (Germany) and afterwards held a position as researcher at the Hamburg University of Technology (Germany). In this time she specialised on the field of fluid and soil interaction processes, which has also been the focus of her PhD. Today she is working in the Netherlands at the independent research institute Deltares in the Hydraulic Engineering Unit. In her position as a researcher and consultant she uses her expertise on local hydrodynamics, waves, geotechnics, morphodynamics and their complex interaction with offshore structures to reduce uncertainties and improve the design of offshore renewable structures to make them more resilient and cost-effective. In collaboration with other experts at Deltares and partners from academia and industry, she contributes as a researcher in international applied research projects to optimise the design process and develop new guidelines together in consultancy and joint industry projects.