Prof. em. Dr. Dimos Poulikakos

Dimos Poulikakos has been Full Professor of Thermodynamics at the ETH Zurich since 1996. He founded the laboratory of thermodynamics in emerging technologies in the Institute for Energy Technology. From December 2005 to August 2007 he took office as Vice-President of the ETH Zurich, responsible for research.

A citizen of Switzerland, the United States as well as of Greece, Prof. Poulikakos was born in Athens, Greece. After receiving his degree in mechanical engineering from the National Technical University, Athens, he studied at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he earned his M.S. in 1980 and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1983. Before joining ETH Zurich he was full professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His current research is in the area of nanotechnology, interfacial transport phenomena,  and thermodynamics in emerging technologies, and novel energy conversion methods, with a broad palette of applications. Among the awards he has received for his contributions are the White House/NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985, the Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal in 1986, the Society of Automotive Engineers Ralph R. Teetor Award in 1986, the University of Illinois Scholar Award in 1986, the James H. Potter Gold Medal in Thermodynamics in 2000, the Heat Transfer Memorial Award for Science in 2003, from ASME, the Nusselt-Reynolds Prize of the World Assembly of Heat Transfer Conferences in 2009 and the Max Jacob Award (2012), jointly from ASME and AIChE. He was the Russell S. Springer Professor of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of California at Berkeley (2003) and the Hawkins Memorial Lecturer of Purdue University in (2004). He is a Member of the Swiss National Academy of Engineering and past president of its Science Advisory Board.

He has published over 450 research articles in peer refereed scientific journals and many papers in scientific conference proceedings as well as a textbook in heat conduction (Prentice Hall, 1994). He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal the Experimental Heat Transfer, and an Editor of Scientific Reports, the Journal of Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, the Journal of Porous Media, the Intl. Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer and the Intl. Journal of Transport Phenomena. He represents Switzerland in the world assembly of heat transfer conferences. He is a Fellow of ASME. He is a member of the Swiss National Academy of Engineering.