Christodoulos Floudas was director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute and the Erle Nye ’59 Chair Professor for Engineering Excellence in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

He previously served Princeton University for 29 years and was the Stephen C. Macaleer ’63 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, and Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Emeritus at Princeton.

He was one of the Greek scientists ranking in the 2014 and 2015 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher list. He passed away at age 56 in August 2016, while on vacation with his family in Greece.

Born in Ioannina, Greece, Floudas studied at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and later continued his studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

In 1986 he started working for Princeton University, where he was named Professor in 1994. He has taught as a Visiting Professor at Imperial College, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, University of Vienna and University of Minnesota.

He was internationally renowned for his research in mathematical modeling and optimization of complex systems at the macroscopic and microscopic level. His research interests were in the area of chemical engineering interface, applied mathematics and operations research. The principal emphasis was on addressing fundamental problems in process synthesis and design, interaction of design and control, computational chemistry and molecular biology.

He has authored Nonlinear and Mixed-Integer Optimization and Deterministic Global Optimization and has also signed over 200 joural publications.

He has received several teaching and research honours, such as:

• 1988: NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award
• 1995: Engineering Council Teaching Award
• 1997: Bodossaki Foundation Award in Applied Sciences
•  1998: Best Paper Award in Computers & Chemical Engineering
• 1999: Aspen Tech Excellence in Teaching Award
• 2001: AIChE Professional Progress Award
• 2006: AIChE Computing in Chemical Engineering Award
• 2007: Princeton University Graduate Mentoring Award