Felice Arena (male) is Full Professor in Ocean Engineering at Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria and Director of the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory. His fields of interest for the research activity include: nonlinear sea waves; short-term and long-term statistics of ocean waves; random forces of sea waves on either coastal or offshore structures; new devices for absorption of wave energy, either to protect a coast or to produce electrical power. He has published more than 300 papers in international journals, books and conference proceedings. He has advised over one hundred undergraduate and MS graduate students. He mentored 22 graduated PhD students and has been advising 1 PhD students in Ocean Engineering. He also mentored 16 Post-Doc students.
He is Member of the Scientific Committee for the Structures, Safety And Reliability Symposium at the “Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OOAE) Division” by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has served in the scientific committees of many national and international conferences.
He was Senior Member, in PIANC, of the Working Group “Renewable Energy for Maritime Ports” (159), between 2012 and 2019.
Since March 2009 he is the Director of the NOEL laboratory, for small scale field experiments. The lab was founded by Paolo Boccotti, of the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, and it is located in the seashore of Reggio Calabria.
He is: in the Editorial Board of “Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics”, Elsevier; Associate Editor of Springer “Journal of Ocean Engineering and Marine Energy”; Specialty Chief Editor in “Wave and Tidal Energy” in “FRONTIERS in Energy Research”; in the EB of “Journal of Marine Science and Engineering”. He was Associate Editor of “ASME JOMAE” in 2018-2023.
He won the “OMAE 2011 SSR Best paper Award”, by American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME (USA), OOAE, for the paper “Space-Time Extremes in Sea Storms” written with F. Fedele (GeorgiaTech, USA) and M.A. Tayfun (Kuwait University).
He has been invited Editor of Special Issues in “Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics” (2014, vol. 34; 124pp.); “Phil. Trans. A of the Royal Society of London” (2015 vol. 373; issue 2035); “Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics” (2018, vol. 54, 146pp.).
In March 2016 he gave a course in India, within program GIAN (Global Initiative of Academic Networks), supported by Indian Government. The course (30 hours, 2CFU), given at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai (India), had title “Extreme Waves in Ocean Engineering”.
He has been scientific supervisor (principal investigator) of many Italian and international projects (for a whole amount of more than 30 million of euros, on offshore engineering and marine energy. In particular: he was scientific supervisor of project PLENOSE, supported by Marie Curie action FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES (duration 2014-2018); he was scientific coordinator of the European Project REWEC 3 – 2013-IT-92050-S, supported by the EU’s TEN-T Programme, on the wave energy exploitation in the Port of Civitavecchia; he has been leading the UNIRC unit in the Horizon 2020 project with acronym “The Blue Growth Farm”, supported within the call H2020-BG-2017-1 (activity: BG-04). Duration of the project: 2018-2023. For details see www.noel.unirc.it.
He founded WAVENERGY.IT, which is a limited company established for developing devices for producing electrical power from oceans (www.wavenergy.it); the company is a Spin Off of the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (Italy). For this Spin-Off, F. Arena is Scientific Supervisor: (i) of the Civitavecchia Project, an Italian port in which a 650m breakwater with a REWEC3 device; (ii) of the Salerno Port project, for a 200m long REWEC3 breakwater; projects are related to the building of Wave Energy Converters.
Selected, for his career activity, in the ‘World’s Top 2% Scientists List’ produced by Stanford University (USA) in 2020, 21, 22, 23 and 2024, as one of the world’s leading experts in the field of marine engineering.
In November 2018 he joined the “ISSC Ocean Space Utilization Committee (V.6)”, in the International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress (ISSC). Activities were concluded with the International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress 2022, in Canada.
Between 2012 and 2017, Felice Arena was a member of the National Commission for Forecasting and Preventing Major Risks (Rome, Italy); chairman of the commission was Professor Luciano Maiani. Between 2018 and 2022 he was in the  Working group for the evaluation of the tsunami impact in Italy, for the National (Italian) Service of Civil Protection, Rome, Italy.
Since September 2023 he is member of the National Commission for Forecasting and Preventing Major Risks (Rome, Italy), in the Ministry for Civil Protection and Marine Policies (Rome, Italy): it is the connecting structure between the National Service of Civil Protection and the scientific Community, in Italy.
In July 2018 he was elected as a component of the Technical-Scientific Committee of the Italia Cluster BIG (Blue Italian Growth) on blue growth, with the team of the President Roberto Cimino (ENI). He was confirmed as component of the BIG Technical-Scientific Committee in 2021 (with President Giovanni Caprino, Fincantieri), and in 2024 (with President Matteo Elli, ENI, and vice-president Paolo Guglia, Fincantieri).
Professor Arena is in the Board of Directors of the CONISMA CONSORTIUM, with 35 associated Universities, operating in the field of Marine Sciences.