Faculty Profile

Dionisios G. Vlachos

Unidel Dan Rich Chair in Energy Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Director, Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI)
Director, Delaware Energy Institute (DEI)

Education 

  • Doctorate – 1992 University of Minnesota
  • Masters – 1990 University of Minnesota
  • Bachelors – 1987 National Technical University of Athens

About Dionisios G. Vlachos

Dionisios (Dion) G. Vlachos is the Unidel Dan Rich Chair in Energy Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware, the Director of the University of Delaware Energy Institute (UDEI), of the UD node of the manufacturing institute RAPID, and the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC). He is the ExxonMobil Visiting Chair Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 2018-2021.

Dion obtained a five-year diploma in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1987, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1990 and 1992. He spent a postdoctoral year at the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center in Minnesota. Dr. Vlachos joined the University of Massachusetts as an assistant professor and promoted to an associate professor in 1998. He joined the University of Delaware in 2000. He was a visiting fellow at Princeton University in 2000, a visiting faculty member at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in 2007, the George Pierce Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota in 2007, the Allan and Myra Ferguson Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, 2016-2020, and the Elizabeth Inez Kelley Professor of Chemical Engineering, 2009-2016.

He is the ExxonMobil Visiting Chair Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 2018-2021. Professor Vlachos is the winner of the 2020 Irving Wender Award for Excellence in Catalysis from the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society, the 2016 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award, the R. H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from AIChE (2011) and is an AAAS Fellow (since 2009). He also received an NSF Career Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.

Vlachos’ research focuses on circular economy and waste derivatization, multiscale modeling and simulation, distributed (bio)chemical manufacturing, process intensification and novel catalytic reactors, renewable fuels and chemicals, catalyst informatics and in silico materials prediction, and kinetic modeling. He is a pioneer of the multiscale modeling field and the introduction of fundamental research in biomass.

He is the corresponding author of more than 600 refereed publications, ~40,000 citations, and an h factor of 106 (Google Scholar) and has given over 300 plenary lectures, keynote lectures, and other invited talks. Professor Vlachos is the Editor-in-Chief of Reaction Chemistry and Engineering. He was an Executive Editor of Chemical Engineering Science and has served or serves on several editorial boards.

Select Publications 

For a complete listing of publications, please view the Full CV.

  1. D. A. Hansgen, D. G. Vlachos, and J. G. Chen, “Using first principles to predict bimetallic catalysts for the ammonia decomposition reaction”, Nature Chemistry 2, 484-489 (2010)
  2. W. Guo and D. G. Vlachos, “Patched bimetallic surfaces are active catalysts for ammonia decomposition”, Nature Communications 6, No. 8619 (2015)
  3. J. E. Sutton, W. Guo, M. A. Katsoulakis and D. G. Vlachos, “Effects of correlated parameters and uncertainty in electronic-structure-based chemical kinetic modelling”, Nature Chemistry 8, 331–337 (2016); doi:10.1038/nchem.2454
  4. M. Núñez, J. L. Lansford, and D. G. Vlachos, “Optimization of the facet structure of transition-metal catalysts applied to the oxygen reduction reaction”, Nature Chemistry 11, 449–456 (2019), DOI:doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0247-4
  5. J. L. Lansford, and D. G. Vlachos, “Infrared spectroscopy data- and physics-driven machine learning for characterizing surface microstructure of complex materials”, Nature Communications 11(1), 1513 (2020), DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-15340-7
  6. K. A. Goulas, A. V. Mironenko, G. R. Jenness, T. Mazal, and D. G. Vlachos, “Fundamentals of C–O bond activation on metal oxide catalysts”, Nature Catalysis 2(3), 269-276 (2019), DOI:10.1038/s41929-019-0234-6
  7. J. Y. Fu, J. Lym, W. Q. Zheng, K. Alexopoulos, A. V. Mironenko, N. Li, J. A. Boscoboinik, D. Su, R. T. Weber, and D. G. Vlachos, “C-O bond activation using ultralow loading of noble metal catalysts on moderately reducible oxides”, Nature Catalysis 3(5), 446-453 (2020), DOI:10.1038/s41929-020-0445-x
  8. J. Feng, J. L. Lansford, M. A. Katsoulakis, and D. G. Vlachos, “Explainable and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence for Correctable Modeling in Chemical Sciences”, Science Advances 6(42), eabc3204 (2020), DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abc3204
  9. E. O. Ebikade, Y. Wang, N. Samulewicz, B. Hasa, and D. Vlachos, “Active learning-driven quantitative synthesis–structure–property relations for improving performance and revealing active sites of nitrogen-doped carbon for the hydrogen evolution reaction”, Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, (2020), DOI:10.1039/D0RE00243G
  10. T. Y. Chen, M. Baker-Fales, and D. G. Vlachos, “Operation and Optimization of Microwave-Heated Continuous-Flow Microfluidics”, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 59(22), 10408-10417 (2020), DOI:10.1021/acs.iecr.0c01650

Patents (h3)

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Office: 250M ISEB
Phone: 302-831-2830
vlachos@udel.edu

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