Maravelias, the Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment and chair of chemical and biological engineering, studies how the many aspects of energy production and distribution fit together. Many of these systems are comprised of subsystems, all designed by different teams with unique goals in mind. Maravelias builds detailed computational models of these large systems and runs algorithms to analyze and improve them, part and whole. Targets of this optimization include increasing efficiency, lowering costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving supply chains.

The AIChE award honors his impacts on this approach to optimization and modeling, especially as it relates to the production and distribution of biofuels, the sustainable production of key chemical products such as ammonia using renewable energy sources, and other energy optimization methods.

Maravelias joined Princeton in 2020 after 16 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was the Paul E. Elfers Professor. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the director of AIChE’s computing and systems technology (CAST) division, and from 2017 to 2019 he was the CAST division vice-chair and chair. He has been a team lead at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center since 2017. Previous honors include a Production and Operations Management Society Applied Research Challenge Award and an NSF CAREER Award, among many others. Maravelias received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree from the National Technical University of Athens. In 2021, Maravelias published a monograph titled “Chemical Production Scheduling” with Cambridge University Press.