Eric Fusil

Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Adelaide
Eric Fusil is a French-Australian Submarine passionate, having dedicated all his 20+ years of professional life to submarine industry.

He is a naval architect by background and had his experience crafted by a variety of roles covering the full spectrum of a boat lifecycle (design, build, test and activation and sustainment) and worldwide (USA, France, Australia) including Submarine Shipyard facilities (performing reviews for overseas customers to assess fitness for purpose).

He is fully aware of the challenges stemming from the local environment and, for instance, can put the Australian Future Submarine and Hunter Class project into perspective with the knowledge of his native background. In other words: he can bridge between two worlds.

After having worked for Naval Group in France and ASC in Australia, he created his own company, ODYSSEE AUS in 2017, working in Defence Industry worldwide before accepting a role at the University of Adelaide

Dedicated to the Australian sovereign capability he is now Assoc. Professor at the University of Adelaide, Director of the Shipbuilding Hub for Integrated Engineering and Local Design, and as Submarine Design postgraduate courses coordinator.

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Eric graduated as a Naval Architect (Masters in Engineering) in 1995 from ENSTA Bretagne (a French “grande école d’Ingénieurs” with highly competitive entry exam) after an internship within NAVSEA (Virginia, USA) and started his career in Production Quality controls for noise and vibration during build on SSBN and SSK, for what was DCNS and now known as Naval Group.

He then managed submarines sea trials and their commissioning for demanding customers (domestic and overseas).

From 1999 to 2003, he delivered in the pre-concept, concept and preliminary design phases of Barracuda submarine as engineer in charge of signatures and shock (underwater explosions).

In 2006, he joined the concept design office to be the lead naval architect and ultimately whole-of-boat technical lead for new batches of Scorpene conventional submarines up to 2012, including bids for overseas customers.

He joined ASC in 2013 after 18 years of submarine industry, 4 classes of submarines at sea or being built and roughly 2,000 hours of undersea navigation on submarines.

He was in charge of the Future Submarine design and build aspects at ASC PTY Ltd with his team of engineers and ultimately worked in submarine capability development before creating his own company, ODYSSEE AUS, in 2017 with customers in France, Australia and overseas.

Eric presented papers in forums such as Undersea Defence Technology in Europe, Anti Submarine Warfare conference in Singapore, Submarine Institute of Australia and Pacific Conferences.

He is a chartered engineer with Engineers Australia, a member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects and of the Submarine Institute of Australia.

He is now course coordinator and lecturer for the postgraduate Submarine Design courses leading to the Masters of Marine Engineering of the University of Adelaide and the newly created French Australian Dual Degree with ENSTA Bretagne.

He has also initiated and developed the Adelaide French Australian Schools with a focus on bilingual education.