Manos Mavrikakis Joins ChE Faculty

Manos Mavrikakis (15K JPG)

Late last spring, Manos Mavrikakis accepted a position as assistant professor with the department. Manos started this past fall. His research interests are in computational surface chemistry and materials design (see related article).

Manos, a native of Athens, Greece, received his diploma in chemical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He went on to study at the University of Michigan, where he received his MS in applied mathematics and a PhD degree in chemical engineering and scientific computing, working with two thesis advisors: Professors Johannes Schwank of the ChE department and John Gland of chemistry. After graduate school, he fulfilled his military obligations by serving in the Hellenic Navy as a programmer and systems analyst. Subsequently, he served as a postdoctoral fellow for 15 months with Professor Mark Barteau, director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology at the University of Delaware. Manos then received a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Science Foundation and joined the renowned group of Professor Jens Nørskov at the Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics at the Technical University of Denmark, where he served as postdoctoral fellow for two years before coming to Madison.

Manos is currently setting up new advanced computing facilities for his research group and teaching the introductory course in chemical process thermodynamics. He looks forward to teaching such other subjects as kinetics and reaction engineering, as well as advanced topics in catalysis, surface chemistry and physics.