Rate My Professor George Philippidis

George Philippidis is Acting Dean of the Patel College of Global Sustainability and Director of the Sustainable Energy concentration at the University of South Florida. A Fulbright Specialist Scholar and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from the University of Denver. His distinguished career spans academia, industry, and government advisory roles. He began at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver, pioneering biomass conversion to ethanol as a renewable transportation fuel. Subsequently, he advanced clean technology commercialization at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Boston and created and directed the energy business at the Applied Research Center in Miami. Dr. Philippidis has managed energy and environmental projects across the US and Latin America, partnered in venture capital firms, and founded technology start-ups. He has advised the US State Department, US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Energy, Organization of American States, and Florida Office of Energy, while serving on company advisory boards.

At USF, Dr. Philippidis directs applied research, scale-up, and commercialization of technologies converting algae and biomass into sustainable biofuels and bioproducts through industry partnerships. His engineering expertise drives innovations in biofuels including ethanol, biodiesel, and aviation fuel; bioproducts such as cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and aquaculture feeds; and biopower from cellulosic biomass and inedible oils. Key areas encompass algae cultivation optimization, biomass pretreatment with green chemistry, cellulase enzymes for sugar production, fermentation processes, and biodiesel from algal lipids and vegetable oils. He has developed and taught graduate courses on renewable transportation fuels, renewable power portfolios, and bioresources for sustainability. Dr. Philippidis has authored numerous publications and holds 11 patents in clean technologies, contributing significantly to renewable energy advancement and circular economy principles.