Research and publications

Major fields of his research include: Implementation of photovoltaic and hybrid renewable energy systems (and micro-grids) to supply electricity and services to rural and remote areas. Desalination powered by renewable energy technologies. Also he has been investigating experimentally and theoretically organic Rankine thermodynamic cycles for exploiting low grade heat for power production. Other areas of research are biomass for energy such as investigation of energy production technologies utilizing liquid and solid biofuels.

He has published more than 150 scientific papers cited more than 2200 times with h index equal to 29 (data from www.scopus.com).

He is member of the Editorial Boards of the following Journals

• Journal of Power and Energy Engineering (www.scirp.org/journal/jpee).
• Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications, (http://www.ashdin.com/journals/jfrea/jfrea.aspx).
• British Journal of Renewable Energy, (http://measpublishing.co.uk/journals/bjre/).
• Journal of Agricultural Engineering (JAE), the official journal of the Italian Society of Agricultural Engineering, (http://www.agroengineering.org/jae/index).
• Balkan Agricultural Engineering Review, (http://baer.uni-ruse.bg/), (Past Member).
• CIGR Journal, (http://www.cigrjournal.org/index.php/Ejounral/index), (Past Member).

In the past 19 years he has been collaborating with many public and private institutions from more than 35 countries from Europe and internationally in projects funded by the European Union and other international and national organizations. Since 1997 he has been scientific coordinator of more than 28 projects of which 15 international multi partners' research projects that were funded by the European Commission (all competitive projects). The overall projects' budget managed by himself with the AUA as beneficiary has exceeded 5.5 million EURO while the overall budget of the multi partners' projects he has been coordinating has exceeded 17.5 million EURO.

Teaching and Theses supervision

He has supervised 4 PhDs and is currently supervising 3 PhD students. He coordinates a research group at AUA (www.renewables.aua.gr), which includes: 2 faculty members, 5 post-doc researchers, 3 Ph.D. students and 2 other engineers.

He is teaching courses on, Renewable Energy Technologies, Heat and Mass transport processes, Agricultural Machines, and Hydraulic Machines.

University administration and management experience

He was Vice Rector (Vice President) of AUA responsible for the economic affairs, research and development of the university (a 4 year term, September 2010 - August 2014). Major responsibilities included, management of the yearly budget of the university (as set by the Greek Ministry of Education - about 3.5 million EURO per year), management of the research funding of any source, finding new funds for the university. Major accomplishments include a) the setting up of a project for development appropriate structures for the exploitation of research results of the university, such as the foundation of a tech transfer office and a business incubator at campus (project funded by 860 thousands EURO by the municipality of Athens with a duration of two and a half years). Such structures never existed before at AUA; b) negotiation and securing the funding of new educational and research equipment for the university, (project funded with 8.5 million EURO by the prefecture of Attica with a duration of two years); c) development of a lifelong training centre and agricultural extension service and the establishment of an innovation and entrepreneurship centre, (project to be financed by the Stavros Niarchos foundation -based in New York City- with more than 12 million EURO with a duration of 4 years). At the same time and despite the harsh economic conditions in Greece he drove the AUA research budget to a record peak in the year 2013 (about 12.5 million EURO).

Innovation and entrepreneurship

He has recently submitted two disclosure forms for commercial exploitation of two technologies developed by his research group while he is among the founders of a start-up company for the exploitation of the organic Rankine technology.