Dr. George Bollas is the Pratt & Whitney Endowed Chair Professor in Advanced Systems Engineering with the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department at UConn. He is the Director of the Pratt & Whitney Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering at UConn. He is also the Associate Dean of Research for the UConn College of Engineering. Prior to joining UConn, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and before that he received his BS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. His interdisciplinary research merges the fields of energy technology, process systems engineering and model-based systems engineering.
His laboratory pursues a balanced approach to information theory for the design, optimization, control, operation, and maintenance of cyber-physical systems, with applications on energy, chemical industry, manufacturing, naval and the aerospace industry. Dr. Bollas is the recipient of the NSF CAREER and ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator awards; the UConn Mentorship Excellence award; the UConn School of Engineering Dean’s Excellence award; AIChE Teacher of Year award; and the Chemical & Biomolecular Department Service award. He was a member of the 2016 Frontier of Engineering Education of the NAE and was elected as member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering in 2020. He has partnered with over 100 industry professionals and executives in generating and managing funding for UConn that exceeds $50M leading to joint R&D, technology, patents, and professional training programs. He manages a portfolio of over $7M in research projects, while his Institute manages active research funding that totals over $40M.
As a 2024-25 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Greece, Dr. Bollas will collaborate with the Centre for Research and Technology (CERTH) in Thessaloniki. Together with his hosts at CERTH he will investigate methods to use ammonia as an economically feasible, environmentally friendly chemical compound, which can help decarbonize the transportation and power sectors.