Alexandros Stefanakis

Assistant Professor
P.Eng., M.Sc., Ph.D.

Laboratory of Environmental Engineering & Management, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete

Dr. A. Stefanakis is Assistant Professor at the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete and Director of the Laboratory of Environmental Engineering and Management. He is the elected President of the International Ecological Engineering Society and elected Regional Coordinator for Africa and the Middle East for the 'Wetland Systems for Water Pollution Control' Group of the International Water Association. He has also been designated as a European Ambassador of the European Climate Pact by the European Commission. He has been included in the list of the top 2% of Scientists worldwide of Stanford University, published annually by Elsevier. For 2022, he ranked 227 in the scientific field of Environmental Engineering among 57,175 scientists. He is Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal 'Circular Economy and Sustainability' (Springer), and Associate Editor of 'Ecological Engineering' (Elsevier), 'Environmental Science and Pollution Research' (Springer), 'Nature-Based Solutions' (Elsevier), and 'Wetlands Ecology and Management' (Springer). He also is Editor-in-Chief of the Springer scientific book series 'Circular Economy and Sustainability'. He is a graduate in Environmental Engineering and holds a PhD in ecological engineering and technology. His expertise lies in water and wastewater engineering and in particular in nature-based solutions. He works and studies the content and principles of circular economy across different industries and sectors. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of sustainable and decentralized water and wastewater management with over 15 years of experience in the research, design, construction and operation of ecological technologies. He has implemented Constructed Wetlands projects for wastewater treatment in various countries around the world for a wide range of applications, such as surface water, municipal wastewater, various industrial wastewaters, oilfield wastewater and sludge dewatering. His professional portfolio includes the world's largest industrial Constructed Wetland plant (175,000 m³/day) for the management of oilfield wastewater in Oman, which has been awarded by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for its environmental performance. He has also designed the world's largest Constructed Wetland for municipal wastewater treatment (16,000 m³/day) in Saudi Arabia, as well as one of the world's largest Constructed Wetland systems for mine effluents treatment in Brazil (75,000 m³/day).