CONFERENCE CHAIR

Prof. Dimitrios Maroudas
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

Biography of the Conference Chair

Dimitrios Maroudas graduated with the highest honors from the National Technical University of Athens in 1987 with a Diploma in Chemical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992. He then conducted postdoctoral research at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., in the area of theoretical and computational materials physics. He joined the faculty of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as an Assistant Professor in the summer of 1994, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999 and to Professor in 2001. One year later, he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Amherst, as Professor of Chemical Engineering. At UMass Amherst, he is currently serving also as Graduate Program Director of Chemical Engineering and Director of the College of Engineering's Materials Engineering Program. He was a Visiting Associate Professor (on sabbatical leave) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT for the academic year 2000-01. His awards include a CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and a UMass Amherst College of Engineering Outstanding Senior Faculty Award. He was an invited plenary speaker in the National Research Council's workshop on Challenges for the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Century: Information & Communications in the fall of 2002 and a co-organizer of the National Academy of Engineering's 10th Annual Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering in September of 2004.
The main theme of Professor Maroudas' research is the multiscale modeling of complex systems with emphasis on the structure, properties, dynamics, processing, and reliability of thin-film and nanostructured forms of structural materials and materials that are used in electronic, optoelectronic, and photovoltaic device fabrication technologies. He has published over 165 refereed articles in journals and conference proceedings and given over 90 invited presentations in national and international conferences, and academic, government, and industrial seminars.