Catalysis in Chemistry and Physics

Professor Constantinos (Costas) Vayenas was born in Athens on September 22, 1950, studied Chemical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTU, 1968-1973) and got his PhD in 1976 from the University of Rochester in the USA. He then taught as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering and Applied Science at Yale University (1976-77) and as an Associate Professor at MIT (1977-82), getting twice the Outstanding Teacher Award. He then moved for family reasons to the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Patras in Greece. He is an International member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the USA and a member of the Academy of Athens. Since 2001 he serves as Editor of Modern Aspects of Electrochemistry. He has authored two books and more than 250 papers in Catalysis and Electrochemistry and, after 2008, a Springer book and 50 papers in Particle Physics which is currently his main research interest and where, together with his coworkers, he has developed the Rotating Lepton Model (RLM) of the Elementary particles.

Dionysios Tsousis was born in Patras in 1998. He holds the highest average so far achieved in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Patras, from which he graduated in 2021. He is currently doing his PhD on the Unification of Gravitational, Strong and Weak Forces under the supervision of Prof. Constantinos Vayenas, with whom he has seven joint publications so far. Prior to committing to the University of Patras for his PhD, he had been admitted to every single PhD program in the States he had applied to. He has also given several presentations on Physics and Chemical Engineering at International and Greek conferences. His research interests include Mathematical Modeling of Physical Systems, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Statistical Mechanics, and Particle Physics.

Dr. Eftychia Martino is a research Chemical Engineer at the University of Patras with interests in catalysis and electrocatalysis. She leads research on fuel cells and currently lectures at the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Patras in Greece. Dr. Martino obtained her Ph. D. in electrochemistry from the University of Patras in 2019 and has authored several publications in her field.