Roman Śmierzchalski born in 1956 in Gdynia. He received the M.Sc. degree in 1979, the Ph.D. degree in 1989, both from the Gdańsk University of Technology, and the D.Sc. (‘habilitation’) degree in 1999 from the Warsaw University of Technology. From 1980 to 2009 he was an academic teacher and researcher with the Gdynia Maritime University, and since 2009 he has been with the Gdansk University of Technology, where he is currently Professor of Control Engineering.

His research and teaching interests include control and automation, artificial intelligence, dynamic and multi-objective optimization, decision support systems, safety at sea. He is the author and co-author of 200 scientific and technical papers, including 11 in journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. He was
a supervisor of 5 PhD completed projects.

He was the project leader in 7 national projects, a project team member in a project funded within the 5th Framework Programme of the EU entitled Safety and Reliability of Industrial Products, Systems (SAFERELNET) and a project team member in a Tempus project executed by the University of Plymouth, Institute of Maritime Studies. He delivered invited lectures at the Kansai University in Osaka, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Shanghai Maritime University, Technical University of Lisbon and University of Johannesburg. He also delivered lectures in Ireland, Spain and Finland in the frame of the Erasmus program.