In my position as associate professor at Delft University of Technology and as a guest lecturer at UNESCO-IHE (Delft, the Netherlands), I have for more than 20 years, with great pleasure, supported students and professionals in their study of ocean waves. At Delft University I have had, in addition, the opportunity to work with colleagues, notably Nico Booij, on developing numerical wave models, one of which (SWAN) has widely been accepted as an operational model for predicting waves in coastal waters.