Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Archimedes was the first to use a screw propeller to lift water for irrigation and bailing boats. This soon became known as the Archimedes screw, which was later adopted by Leonardo da Vinci to design a machine that could fly (the aerial screw).

Even today’s propellers or airscrews operate under the same principle, they create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. Celebrating this heritage, the Lab’s logo was inspired by one of our students (Karageorgou Agapi) at the Department of Product & Systems Design Engineering, to represent the trailing vortex created by a moving forward propeller or wing rotating blades.