Blake Boren works within NLR's water power program as a technology innovation, modeling, and assessment engineer. Boren's research centers on developing methods and concepts to convert ocean energy into more usable forms such as electricity and desalinated water. Spanning nearly a decade, Boren's experience in marine renewable energy originates from time spent in industry and academia. Prior to NLR, Boren served as a modeling and controls engineer for a startup company helping to lead the development of numerical modeling tools for ocean wave energy converters. Additionally, Boren held a postdoctoral research position at Virginia Tech conducting high-fidelity fluid-structure interaction analysis for complex and atypical types of ocean energy converters.

Distributed embedded energy converter technologies

Technology innovations, including exploiting basic principles to explicitly innovate towards paradigm shifts

Robotics for marine renewable energy, including dynamics, controls, embedded systems, machine learning

Empirical research, including prototyping, instrumentation, and data acquisition

Postdoctorial Researcher, Virginia Tech (2018)

Modeling and Controls Engineer, Waterpower Technologies (2015–2017)