Prof. Dr. Sotiris E. Pratsinis

Particle Technology

Prof. Pratsinis (Diploma, Ch.Eng., Aristotle Univ. Thessaloniki, Greece, 1977 and Ph.D. Eng., 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 until he was elected Professor (1998) and Head (2007-09) of Mechanical and Process Engineering and Adjunct Professor of Materials Science (2003) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). 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 on particle dynamics focuses on the fundamentals of aerosol synthesis of materials with applications in catalysis, sensors and nanocomposites. He has published over 250 refereed journal articles with his students, 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 2005-06 he was appointed Russell Severance Springer Visiting Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, Particle and Particle Systems Characterization, KONA Powder and Particle, Powder Technology, Journal of Aerosol Science and Advanced Powder Technology. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council Centre on Functional Nanomaterials and on the Science Advisory Board of the Harvard School of Public Health - International Initiative for the Environment and Public Health.