Despo Fatta-Kassinos
Despo Fatta-Kassinos is an Associate Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Director of Nireas International Water Research Center at the University of Cyprus. She holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from NTUA (Athens), an M.Sc. in Environmental Management and Education from the European Association of Environmental Management and Education and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from NTUA (Athens). Her research expertise includes water and wastewater treatment and reuse; contaminants of emerging concern; advanced chemical oxidation processes; advanced biological treatment; advanced chromatographic analysis for the identification of microcontaminants in environmental matrices; assessment of the biological potency of microcontaminants and wastewater flows through the application of bioassays; antibiotic resistance in the aquatic environment; uptake of microcontaminants by crops during wastewater reuse.
Currently, her group is participating in 8 EU-funded research projects (H2020, PRIMA, Water JPI, ERANETMED), while she has participated in more than 70 research projects. She is the Coordinator of the H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015/675530/ANSWER project (2015-2019) and she was the Chair of the COST Action NEREUS ES1403 (2014-2018). She is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the African Center of Excellence in Water and Environment Research, the leader of the WG5 'Wastewater reuse' of NORMAN Association and a founding member of the International Ph.D. School on Advanced Oxidation Processes and member of its Scientific and Management Committee. She is also the Editor of the Journal Environmental Chemical Engineering, Elsevier. Assoc. Prof. Fatta-Kassinos’ publication record includes 141 papers in referred journals, 3 environmental books (co-editor) and various book chapters, and more than 170 presentations at international conferences. She has >12555 citations and h-index of 51 (Google Scholar). She has served as the Chair of the Scientific and Technological Advisory Board of the European JPI 'Water Challenges for a Changing World' (2015-2019). She received the 2012 “Nikos Symeonides” national research award by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation for her work on wastewater treatment and xenobiotics and she is a Highly Cited Researcher 2018 (ranked in the top 1% by citations) in Cross-field research.