Managing Director
Dr Sabrina Maria Malpede
Dr Sabrina Malpede is the co-founder and Managing Director of ACT Blade Ltd and SMAR Azure Ltd.
She has nearly two decades of experience in the design, development, and commercialization of innovative solutions first in the yachting and now in the wind energy industry. She won the Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship in 2003 and a SMART Scotland award for her development of a novel product in the field of rig design in 2004 (now marketed by SMAR Azure Ltd).
She has an Honours degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Federico II (Naples-Italy) and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Glasgow (UK). In 2020, she was awarded by the UK gov DIT with the European Tech Woman Award (International Clean Energy) and in 2022, she won the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Public Award and the second prize of the Woman Leadership award.
Personal awards
October 2022
EIT Public Award
October 2022
Finalist (2nd): EIT Woman Leadership award
September 2020
European Woman Tech Award (category Cleantech)
October 2020
Finalist: SEMTA award in the energy revolution category
October 2024
SMART Scotland Award - Scottish Executive
2003
RSE Enterprise Fellowship, from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Scottish Enterprise
Academic publications
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Fully Integrated fluid-structural analysis for the design and performance optimization of fiber reinforced sails, Technical Proceedings of the 22nd Chesapeake Sailing Yacht Symposium (2016)
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Pat sail-rig analysis method - Trans RINA, Vol. 153, Part B2, International Journal of Small Craft Technology
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A fully integrated method for optimising fiber-membrane sails Proceedings of the 3rd - High Performance Yacht Design Conference, Auckland (2008)
Patents
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ACT Blade Manufacturing Method
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ACT Blade Active version
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Suction Sails -wind propulsion for ships
