Prof. Dr. Sotiris E. Pratsinis

Particle Technology

Professor Sotiris E. Pratsinis (Diploma, Chem. Eng, Aristotle Univ. Thessaloniki, 1977; M.Sc. 1982 & Ph.D. Engineering, UCLA 1985) was born on March 21, 1955 in Chanea, Krete, Greece. He was in the faculty (1985-2000) and interim Head (1998) of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio (USA) until he was elected professor of process engineering (1998), materials science (2003) and head (2007-09) of the Mechanical and Process Engineering Department and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Zurich, Switzerland. There he founded the Particle Technology Laboratory and teaches Mass Transfer, Micro- & Nano-Particle Technology, Introduction to Nanoscale Engineering and Combustion Synthesis of Materials.

His research program on particle dynamics focuses on the fundamentals of aerosols and reactor design for synthesis of materials for catalysis, gas sensors and life science applications. Largely with his students, he has published over 300 refereed journal articles, received about a dozen European and U.S. patents licensed to various industries and contributed to creation of four spinoffs. He has been recognized by the 1988 Kenneth T. Whitby Award of the American Association of Aerosol Research, the 1989 Presidential Young Investigator Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the 1995 Marian Smoluchowski Award of the European Association for Aerosol Research and the 2003 Thomas Baron Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 2009 he won an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council, in 2011 he received a Humboldt Research Award from Germany and in 2012 he was elected to the Swiss Academy of Engineering.

In 2005-06 he was appointed Russell Severance Springer Visiting Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of California, Berkeley and since 2010 he is visiting professor the Harvard School of Public Health and a CENIDE Guest Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. In 1993 he was visiting professor at TU Delft, Netherlands and Univ. Karlsruhe, Germany. He is on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Nanoparticle Research, Particle and Particle Systems Characterization, KONA Powder and Particle, Powder Technology, Advanced Powder Technology, Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering, Journal of Aerosol Science, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research and AIChE Journal.