Presenter Biographies:
Dr. Symeon Christodoulou
Presentation Title: Sustainable Strategies for Managing Urban Water Distribution Networks And the Effects of Intermittent Water Supply
“Dr. Christodoulou holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Columbia University (New York City, 1998) and BSc, MSc and MPhil degrees from the same university. Upon completion of his PhD, and after several years of industry experience in the field of construction management, he joined Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, New York) as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Construction Management Program of the university (1998 - 2003). In 2004 he joined the University of Cyprus where he now is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, having also worked for a year in Cyprus (construction industry) and in Greece (Democritus University of Thrace) as an Adjunct Professor.
Dr. Christodoulou is the author of several scientific publications, the recipient of significant research funding (including a prestigious research grant from the United States’ National Science Foundation, NSF) and the recipient of an international research award (London, 1999). He is a Board of Directors member of the NIREAS International Water Research Center, an associate editor for the Journal of European Water, an editorial board member of the Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITCon) and Cyrpus’s national representative on EU’s COST Domain Committee for Transport and Urban Development (COST/TUD). He is also an Associate Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a reviewer for several scientific journals and a member of several editorial boards for scientific conferences and a member of Polytechnic University's Center for Construction Management Technology.
Dr. Christodoulou’s main research interests are in the areas of construction engineering and management, building information models, risk assessment and rehabilitation of urban infrastructure, fully integrated and automated project processes, information technology, soft-computing techniques and artificial agents.”
Dr. Adriana Bruggeman
Presentation Title:Water resources management in Cyprus under global change
“Dr. Adriana Bruggeman is a research scientist in hydrology and water management at the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center of The Cyprus Institute since September 2009. She has a lifelong interest in the monitoring and modeling of hydrologic processes with the aim to improve the productive and sustainable use of natural resources. Adriana has an MSc in Hydrology and Water Management from Wageningen University, The Netherlands and a PhD in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. She worked for 10 years as research assistant and associate in projects that assessed the impacts of agricultural management practices on water quality, in Virginia, USA. In 1998, she moved to Aleppo, Syria, where she worked for 11 years as an agricultural hydrologist at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). In that capacity she managed hydrology and water management research and capacity building activities in cooperation with various stakeholders throughout the developing countries of the Central Asia, West Asia and North Africa region. She has authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and reports on hydrologic monitoring and modeling, agricultural water management, soil erosion, and participatory research.”
Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus
Presentation Title: The Pipeline Project from Turkey to Cyprus: From Dream to Reality
“Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus was born in 1960 in Nicosia. He completed his elementary and secondary education in Cyprus. Following this, he graduated from the Department of Geological Engineering, Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University in 1982. He commenced his M.Sc. studies at Middle East Technical University in 1982. He started his academic career as a research assistant at Middle East Technical University in 1983, completed his Ph.D. studies in 1990 and after 7 years returned to Cyprus. Since March 1992, he has been working as a lecturer at Near East University (NEU) where he is currently a Professor, the Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering, and the Vice Rector.
He has published 80 articles focusing on water problems, the environment, earthquakes, tourism and education, most of them in English, has served as editor for many books, conducted over 120 presentations in various countries and has taken part in academic committees and scientific and organizational advisory boards of many international conferences. Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus also serves as a member of the Higher Education Council and as General Coordinator for water issues in the Turkish Cypriot community.
Prof. Dr. Gokcekus is married to Dr. Hatice Gokcekus, a specialist of physical treatment and rehabilitation, and has two children.”
Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos
Presentation Title: Pollution of the subsurface from DNAPLs: what are the sources, where do we find them, and what methods can we use to remediate them?
“Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos graduated with the degree Bachelor of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ, USA) focusing on civil engineering. He later earned the degree Master of Engineering (Environmental) from Stevens Tech, and continued his studies at The University of Texas at Austin (USA) where was awarded a Doctorate from the Civil Engineering Department. Dr. Kostarelos became a faculty member at Polytechnic University (now Polytechnic Institute of NYU) in 2000 where his research laboratory focused on subsurface remediation technologies, especially targeting NAPLs.
In 2007, Dr. Kostarelos joined the University of Cyprus faculty in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department and is continuing his research program with the founding of the Subsurface Research Laboratory. His research interests include: flow in porous media and fracture flow, subsurface contamination, investigation and remediation technologies (e.g., chemical sensors, DNAPL recovery technology (SEAR), and Partitioning Interwell Tracer Testing (PITT), landfill design and closure systems, and toxic sediments bio-assays. Kostarelos’ research projects include field and lab studies of Catch Basin Inserts (CBIs) to treat Non Point-Source Pollution; the use of surfactants to recover coal tar; in-situ treatment options for hexavalent chromium contamination; partitioning tracer testing for NAPL detection and estimation, and treatment of dredged sediments.”
Dr. Serkan Abbasoglu
Presentation Title: Renewable Energy Sources and Some System Applications in Cyprus
“Dr. Serkan Abbasoglu was born in Nicosia, Cyprus on September 9, 1976. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Yildiz Technical University, Turkey in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He worked as a visiting researcher in Freiberg Technical University, Germany between 2001 and 2002 and then received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus in 2006. He worked as assistant Coordinator of FP7 Framework Programme in Eastern Mediterranean University between 2006 and 2007. In 2007, he joined the faculty of Cyprus International University and was appointed as Chair of the Energy Systems Engineering Department in 2009. Since 2010, Dr. Abbasoglu has been working as Vice Dean of the Engineering Faculty and is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Abbasoglu has authored over 15 international publications, including 5 Science Citation indexed journal papers and has been involved in two bi-communal projects as consultant; REAP (Resources Efficiency Achievement Project funded by USAID) and Cyprus 2015 (funded by UNDP). Dr. Abbasoglu is a member of the Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Chamber of Mechanical Engineers, Energy Professionals Association (EPA) and Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). His current technical interests cover Renewable Energy Systems, Energy Efficiency and Management and Low-Energy Houses.”
Dr. George Georghiou
Presentation Title: Novel Photovoltaic Technologies for improved energy harvesting
“Dr. George E. Georghiou is currently the leader of PV Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus. Prior to this, he was a University Lecturer and the undergraduate course leader in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southampton, and a Research Advisor for the Electricity Utilization, University of Cambridge. Having graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA, MEng, MA (1996) all with distinction and a PhD (1999), Dr Georghiou continued his work at the University of Cambridge in the capacity of a Research Fellow (1999-2002). Dr Georghiou is currently a member of the CENELEC and IEC TC82 committees on PV and is acting as an expert evaluator for FP7 energy proposals as well as being a member of CIGRE and the European Solar Energy Industrial Initiative. He also represents Cyprus on the FP7 Energy Committee, the SET plan committee, the European Mirror Group on Photovoltaics and sits on the board of the recently-established Cyprus Energy Agency, which receives its funding from the EU. Dr Georghiou has published over 200 papers in international journals and conference proceedings and his team has obtained research funding in excess of 5 million Euros from bodies such as the European Union, Royal Society, Cambridge-MIT Institute, University of Cambridge, Research Promotion Foundation, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, Cyprus Telecommunication Authority, University of Cyprus etc.
Amongst his scholarly achievements, are two outstanding paper awards for the most significant technical scientific contributions and an innovation prize.”
Dr. Ali Muhtaroglu
Presentation Title: Power Management and Energy Scavenging in Computing
“Dr. Ali Muhtaroglu completed his B.S. at University of Rochester with a CASP (Cyprus-America Scholarship Program) scholarship, M.S. at Cornell University, and Ph.D. at Oregon State University, all degrees in Electrical Engineering. He is the coordinator of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) B.S. program, and the M.S. program in Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems (SEES) at METU-NCC. He is also a member of the Renewable Energy Design and Applications Research (REDAR) group at METU-NCC. Prior to joining academia, he worked at Intel Corporation R&D in U.S.A for more than 10 years. His experience and research interests include Integrated Circuit (IC) design, renewable energy systems, and low power system architectures. Dr. Muhtaroglu has numerous publications, and a few patents. He has served in the technical program committees for various IEEE sponsored international conferences. He is currently chairing the Technical Program Committee for the International Conference on Energy Aware Computing. He is a Senior IEEE Member.”
Dr. Savvas Xanthos
Presentation Title: Implementation of state of the Art Modeling and Novel microbial processes in the Nitrogen Cycle: Can such be implemented in Cyprus!
“Dr. Savvas Xanthos obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2004 in the field of experimental aerodynamics from The City College of The City University of New York. He then joined the CCNY mechanical engineering faculty on a two year substitute Assistant Professor where he performed research on traditional fluid mechanics and especially shock wave, expansion wave and blast wave interactions with turbulence along with hot wire anemometry techniques using 3-D velocity and fully 3-D vorticity probes which lead to the ImechE Charles Sharpe Beecher Prize in UK in 2008 . He has also been involved in modeling of atherosclerotic plaque and trying to identify the main reasons of its rupture with professors from the CCNY Biomedical Engineering as well as medical doctors around the world which lead to a Young Investigator Award Finalist place in the American College of Cardiology 2006 annual meeting. In 2006 he joined the applied research program of New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP)at CCNY Civil Engineering department involved in their Nitrogen removal research program focusing on the optimization of final settling tanks using CFD modeling of waste water in final settling tanks. He is a member of multiple professional organizations that includes, the American Physical Society (APS), American Heart Association (AHA), International Water Association (IWA) and Water Environment Federation (WEF). He has served as a reviewer to multiple Journals such as Experiments in Fluids, Water Science and Technology, Chemical Engineering and others and is the author of several scientific publications in journals such as Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Water Science and Technology,Exp. In Fluids, PNAS etc.”
Presentation Title: Sustainable Strategies for Managing Urban Water Distribution Networks And the Effects of Intermittent Water Supply
“Dr. Christodoulou holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Columbia University (New York City, 1998) and BSc, MSc and MPhil degrees from the same university. Upon completion of his PhD, and after several years of industry experience in the field of construction management, he joined Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, New York) as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Construction Management Program of the university (1998 - 2003). In 2004 he joined the University of Cyprus where he now is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, having also worked for a year in Cyprus (construction industry) and in Greece (Democritus University of Thrace) as an Adjunct Professor.
Dr. Christodoulou is the author of several scientific publications, the recipient of significant research funding (including a prestigious research grant from the United States’ National Science Foundation, NSF) and the recipient of an international research award (London, 1999). He is a Board of Directors member of the NIREAS International Water Research Center, an associate editor for the Journal of European Water, an editorial board member of the Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITCon) and Cyrpus’s national representative on EU’s COST Domain Committee for Transport and Urban Development (COST/TUD). He is also an Associate Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a reviewer for several scientific journals and a member of several editorial boards for scientific conferences and a member of Polytechnic University's Center for Construction Management Technology.
Dr. Christodoulou’s main research interests are in the areas of construction engineering and management, building information models, risk assessment and rehabilitation of urban infrastructure, fully integrated and automated project processes, information technology, soft-computing techniques and artificial agents.”
Dr. Adriana Bruggeman
Presentation Title:Water resources management in Cyprus under global change
“Dr. Adriana Bruggeman is a research scientist in hydrology and water management at the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center of The Cyprus Institute since September 2009. She has a lifelong interest in the monitoring and modeling of hydrologic processes with the aim to improve the productive and sustainable use of natural resources. Adriana has an MSc in Hydrology and Water Management from Wageningen University, The Netherlands and a PhD in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. She worked for 10 years as research assistant and associate in projects that assessed the impacts of agricultural management practices on water quality, in Virginia, USA. In 1998, she moved to Aleppo, Syria, where she worked for 11 years as an agricultural hydrologist at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). In that capacity she managed hydrology and water management research and capacity building activities in cooperation with various stakeholders throughout the developing countries of the Central Asia, West Asia and North Africa region. She has authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and reports on hydrologic monitoring and modeling, agricultural water management, soil erosion, and participatory research.”
Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus
Presentation Title: The Pipeline Project from Turkey to Cyprus: From Dream to Reality
“Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus was born in 1960 in Nicosia. He completed his elementary and secondary education in Cyprus. Following this, he graduated from the Department of Geological Engineering, Faculty of Sciences of Ankara University in 1982. He commenced his M.Sc. studies at Middle East Technical University in 1982. He started his academic career as a research assistant at Middle East Technical University in 1983, completed his Ph.D. studies in 1990 and after 7 years returned to Cyprus. Since March 1992, he has been working as a lecturer at Near East University (NEU) where he is currently a Professor, the Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering, and the Vice Rector.
He has published 80 articles focusing on water problems, the environment, earthquakes, tourism and education, most of them in English, has served as editor for many books, conducted over 120 presentations in various countries and has taken part in academic committees and scientific and organizational advisory boards of many international conferences. Dr. Huseyin Gokcekus also serves as a member of the Higher Education Council and as General Coordinator for water issues in the Turkish Cypriot community.
Prof. Dr. Gokcekus is married to Dr. Hatice Gokcekus, a specialist of physical treatment and rehabilitation, and has two children.”
Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos
Presentation Title: Pollution of the subsurface from DNAPLs: what are the sources, where do we find them, and what methods can we use to remediate them?
“Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos graduated with the degree Bachelor of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ, USA) focusing on civil engineering. He later earned the degree Master of Engineering (Environmental) from Stevens Tech, and continued his studies at The University of Texas at Austin (USA) where was awarded a Doctorate from the Civil Engineering Department. Dr. Kostarelos became a faculty member at Polytechnic University (now Polytechnic Institute of NYU) in 2000 where his research laboratory focused on subsurface remediation technologies, especially targeting NAPLs.
In 2007, Dr. Kostarelos joined the University of Cyprus faculty in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department and is continuing his research program with the founding of the Subsurface Research Laboratory. His research interests include: flow in porous media and fracture flow, subsurface contamination, investigation and remediation technologies (e.g., chemical sensors, DNAPL recovery technology (SEAR), and Partitioning Interwell Tracer Testing (PITT), landfill design and closure systems, and toxic sediments bio-assays. Kostarelos’ research projects include field and lab studies of Catch Basin Inserts (CBIs) to treat Non Point-Source Pollution; the use of surfactants to recover coal tar; in-situ treatment options for hexavalent chromium contamination; partitioning tracer testing for NAPL detection and estimation, and treatment of dredged sediments.”
Dr. Serkan Abbasoglu
Presentation Title: Renewable Energy Sources and Some System Applications in Cyprus
“Dr. Serkan Abbasoglu was born in Nicosia, Cyprus on September 9, 1976. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Yildiz Technical University, Turkey in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He worked as a visiting researcher in Freiberg Technical University, Germany between 2001 and 2002 and then received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus in 2006. He worked as assistant Coordinator of FP7 Framework Programme in Eastern Mediterranean University between 2006 and 2007. In 2007, he joined the faculty of Cyprus International University and was appointed as Chair of the Energy Systems Engineering Department in 2009. Since 2010, Dr. Abbasoglu has been working as Vice Dean of the Engineering Faculty and is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Abbasoglu has authored over 15 international publications, including 5 Science Citation indexed journal papers and has been involved in two bi-communal projects as consultant; REAP (Resources Efficiency Achievement Project funded by USAID) and Cyprus 2015 (funded by UNDP). Dr. Abbasoglu is a member of the Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Chamber of Mechanical Engineers, Energy Professionals Association (EPA) and Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). His current technical interests cover Renewable Energy Systems, Energy Efficiency and Management and Low-Energy Houses.”
Dr. George Georghiou
Presentation Title: Novel Photovoltaic Technologies for improved energy harvesting
“Dr. George E. Georghiou is currently the leader of PV Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus. Prior to this, he was a University Lecturer and the undergraduate course leader in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southampton, and a Research Advisor for the Electricity Utilization, University of Cambridge. Having graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA, MEng, MA (1996) all with distinction and a PhD (1999), Dr Georghiou continued his work at the University of Cambridge in the capacity of a Research Fellow (1999-2002). Dr Georghiou is currently a member of the CENELEC and IEC TC82 committees on PV and is acting as an expert evaluator for FP7 energy proposals as well as being a member of CIGRE and the European Solar Energy Industrial Initiative. He also represents Cyprus on the FP7 Energy Committee, the SET plan committee, the European Mirror Group on Photovoltaics and sits on the board of the recently-established Cyprus Energy Agency, which receives its funding from the EU. Dr Georghiou has published over 200 papers in international journals and conference proceedings and his team has obtained research funding in excess of 5 million Euros from bodies such as the European Union, Royal Society, Cambridge-MIT Institute, University of Cambridge, Research Promotion Foundation, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, Cyprus Telecommunication Authority, University of Cyprus etc.
Amongst his scholarly achievements, are two outstanding paper awards for the most significant technical scientific contributions and an innovation prize.”
Dr. Ali Muhtaroglu
Presentation Title: Power Management and Energy Scavenging in Computing
“Dr. Ali Muhtaroglu completed his B.S. at University of Rochester with a CASP (Cyprus-America Scholarship Program) scholarship, M.S. at Cornell University, and Ph.D. at Oregon State University, all degrees in Electrical Engineering. He is the coordinator of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) B.S. program, and the M.S. program in Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems (SEES) at METU-NCC. He is also a member of the Renewable Energy Design and Applications Research (REDAR) group at METU-NCC. Prior to joining academia, he worked at Intel Corporation R&D in U.S.A for more than 10 years. His experience and research interests include Integrated Circuit (IC) design, renewable energy systems, and low power system architectures. Dr. Muhtaroglu has numerous publications, and a few patents. He has served in the technical program committees for various IEEE sponsored international conferences. He is currently chairing the Technical Program Committee for the International Conference on Energy Aware Computing. He is a Senior IEEE Member.”
Dr. Savvas Xanthos
Presentation Title: Implementation of state of the Art Modeling and Novel microbial processes in the Nitrogen Cycle: Can such be implemented in Cyprus!
“Dr. Savvas Xanthos obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2004 in the field of experimental aerodynamics from The City College of The City University of New York. He then joined the CCNY mechanical engineering faculty on a two year substitute Assistant Professor where he performed research on traditional fluid mechanics and especially shock wave, expansion wave and blast wave interactions with turbulence along with hot wire anemometry techniques using 3-D velocity and fully 3-D vorticity probes which lead to the ImechE Charles Sharpe Beecher Prize in UK in 2008 . He has also been involved in modeling of atherosclerotic plaque and trying to identify the main reasons of its rupture with professors from the CCNY Biomedical Engineering as well as medical doctors around the world which lead to a Young Investigator Award Finalist place in the American College of Cardiology 2006 annual meeting. In 2006 he joined the applied research program of New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP)at CCNY Civil Engineering department involved in their Nitrogen removal research program focusing on the optimization of final settling tanks using CFD modeling of waste water in final settling tanks. He is a member of multiple professional organizations that includes, the American Physical Society (APS), American Heart Association (AHA), International Water Association (IWA) and Water Environment Federation (WEF). He has served as a reviewer to multiple Journals such as Experiments in Fluids, Water Science and Technology, Chemical Engineering and others and is the author of several scientific publications in journals such as Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Water Science and Technology,Exp. In Fluids, PNAS etc.”