Christodoulos Achilleus Floudas (August 31, 1959 – August 14, 2016) was a Greek–American chemical engineer. Floudas completed a diploma in

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

at the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

in 1982, and received his Ph.D. in 1986 at Carnegie Mellon University under the guidance of Ignacio Grossmann. Floudas began teaching at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

upon earning his doctorate, and was later named the Stephen C. Macaleer ’63 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science. From February 2015, he was the director of the Energy Institute at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

, as well as the Erle Nye ’59 Chair Professor for Engineering Excellence within the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. His research areas were

global optimization Global optimization is a branch of applied mathematics and numerical analysis that attempts to find the global minima or maxima of a function or a set of functions on a given set. It is usually described as a minimization problem because the max ...

and

process systems engineering Process engineering is the understanding and application of the fundamental principles and laws of nature that allow humans to transform raw material and energy into products that are useful to society, at an industrial level. By taking advantage ...

. In 2011, Floudas was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

" r contributions to theory, methods, and applications of

, computational chemistry, and

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

." In 2013, he was elected a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. From 2014 to 2015, Floudas was listed as one of the

highly cited researchers Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for ...

. His h-index is 100 according to ''Google Scholar''.

Personal life

Floudas was born in Ioannina,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

on 31 August 1959. He died on 14 August 2016 while on vacation in

Chalkidiki Chalkidiki (; el, Χαλκιδική , also spelled Halkidiki, is a peninsula and regional unit of Greece, part of the region of Central Macedonia, in the geographic region of Macedonia in Northern Greece. The autonomous Mount Athos region co ...

at the age of 56.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Floudas, Christodoulos 1959 births 2016 deaths Chemical engineering academics 21st-century American engineers Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Scientists from Ioannina American chemical engineers Texas A&M University faculty 20th-century American engineers Princeton University faculty 21st-century Greek educators Greek engineers 20th-century Greek educators Aristotle University of Thessaloniki alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics