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Professor Vasalos was born in Sifnos, in 1938. He entered the Department of Chemical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, from which he graduated in 1963. He was admitted to the Department of Chemical Engineering at McGill University in October 1965 and in June 1966, transferred to the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He earned both his Master's degree (1967) and his PhD (1969) from MIT.

He started his career in the Amoco Research Center in Naperville, Illinois, where he worked for 10 years from 1969 to 1979, as a research engineer, project manager, process specialist in catalytic cracking, research supervisor, and as a consultant until 1999. He is the author or co author of 43 international patents (related to fluid catalytic cracking, resid cracking, flue gas DeSOx, oil shale retorting) many of which have been successfully used by the refineries. While working at Amoco, he received his Master in Business Administration in the Manager's Program of Northwestern University.

In 1979 he was elected Professor in the Chair of Petrochemical Technology in the Department of Chemical Engineering in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was actively involved in a series of EU funded projects in areas, such as methane coupling, syngas production with emphasis on catalytic reaction engineering and modelling coupled with overall process simulation.

In 1985, he coordinated and managed the foundation of the Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute . Over the next 20 years the institute grew into a research center of excellence in applied research in various disciplines of chemical engineering, and became the nucleus for the establishment of the Center of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) in 2000. In 1985 he set up the Laboratory of Environmental Fuels and Hydrocarbons (LEFH) , which is recognized as one of the cornerstone labs of the Institute. Excellent and state of the art experimental units were successfully designed, ranging from lab to pilot scale, with the heart of the activities being in FCC. LEFH is highly acknowledged by the industrial community as one of the laboratories providing worldwide services to the refining industry.

The scientific accomplishments of Professor Vasalos include over 130 publications in refereed journals, numerous presentations in national and international conferences, invited lectures and seminars. In the course of his academic career, he has supervised 12 PhD theses.

Professor Vasalos is married to Eva Tsitsibakou, Associate Professor in the Classics Department of University of Thessaloniki and they have three daughters, Mina, Sophia and Christina.

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