Michael Tsapatsis

MICHAEL TSAPATSIS joined Johns Hopkins after 15 years at the University of Minnesota, where he was a member of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. He is taking his place among an interdisciplinary group of scholars who are working to address global challenges and teach the next generation.

At Hopkins, Tsapatsis is a tenured professor in the Whiting School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with a joint appointment in the Applied Physics Laboratory’s Research and Exploratory Development Department.

In addition to moving his lab to Hopkins, Tsapatsis teaches courses for both undergraduate and graduate students. An experienced and inspiring teacher, he is known for leading a broad set of core and elective engineering and physical chemistry courses reflecting his interests in reaction engineering, catalysis, separations, transport phenomena, process and product design with emphasis on energy efficiency and process intensification.

Tsapatsis received a diploma in chemical engineering from the University of Patras in Patras, Greece, in 1988. He then traveled to the United States to study at the California Institute of Technology, where he earned both his master’s degree and PhD in chemical engineering in 1991 and 1994, respectively. He was also a post-doctoral fellow at Caltech.

Tsapatsis has published more than 250 papers, given numerous presentations around the world, and in 2015 he was elected member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the “design and synthesis of zeolite-based materials for selective separation and reaction.”