About
Yannis is Head of Water and Environmental Engineering Group (WEEG).
Yannis has >20 years’ experience in research, teaching and training. His focus is on waste utilisation and energy autonomy and produced the EcoBot family of robots powered by microbial fuel cells (MFCs) fed with organic waste, with the latest achievement being Row-bot. He was an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow (2010-2015) and is currently a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation PI on the "Urine-tricity/PEE POWER®" project, which is advancing the MFC technology for sanitation improvement in Developing World Countries. Yannis is Vice-Chair of the EU COST Action, PHOENIX, looking at environmental remediation using bioelectrochemical systems – a line of work he also led for the EU FET OPEN “Living Architecture” project and its follow-on Innovation Action ALICE, now part of the European Innovation Council. His research income in the past 12 years is >£6M and has published >150 peer reviewed journal articles.
You can update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘About’.
Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
You’ll be able to add details about your research, publications, career and academic history to other sections of your staff profile.
Research
Research interests
- Environmental Engineering;
- Bioelectrochemistry;
- Autonomous Bio-Robotics;
- Microbial Fuel Cells;
- Microbial Biofilms; Ultra-low power electronics
Current research
Current research involves environmental engineering, wastewater processing engineering for rural/off-grid communities, microbial fuel cells (MFCs), biofilm systems for biosensing, wearable bio-devices, autonomous bio-robots and ultra-low power bio-electronics. Certain aspects of technology developed in the lab (millilitre scale), such as bioelectrochemical systems (MFCs), have been field tested at appropriate scale (100’s of litres size) and a big part of our research portfolio is to do with system design, configuration and manufacturing scale-up for real world implementation. One example is Pee Power® which has been tested in sub-Saharan Africa and is aimed for improving sanitation and generating energy in non-sewered environments.
You can update the information for this section in Pure (opens in a new tab).
Research groups
Any research groups you belong to will automatically appear on your profile. Speak to your line manager if these are incorrect. Please do not raise a ticket in Ask HR.
Research interests
Add up to 5 research interests. The first 3 will appear in your staff profile next to your name. The full list will appear on your research page. Keep these brief and focus on the keywords people may use when searching for your work. Use a different line for each one.
In Pure (opens in a new tab), select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading 'Curriculum and research description', select 'Add profile information'. In the dropdown menu, select 'Research interests: use separate lines'.
Current research
Update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’ and then ‘Curriculum and research description - Current research’.
Describe your current research in 100 to 200 words. Write in the third person. Include broad key terms to help people discover your work, for example, “sustainability” or “fashion textiles”.
Research projects
Research Council funded projects will automatically appear here. The active project name is taken from the finance system.
Publications
Pagination
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
-
Next page
Next
Public outputs that list you as an author will appear here, once they’re validated by the ePrints Team. If you’re missing any outputs that you’ve added to Pure, they may be waiting for validation.
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Contact your Faculty Operating Service team to update PhD students you supervise and any you’ve previously supervised. Making this information available will help potential PhD applicants to find you.
Teaching
CENV2035 City Infrastructure Design Project
MEng Year 1 Deputy Coordinator
You can update your teaching description in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’ , select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select – ‘Teaching Interests’. Describe your teaching interests and your current responsibilities. Aim for 200 words maximum.
Courses and modules
Contact the Curriculum and Quality Assurance (CQA) team for your faculty to update this section.
External roles and responsibilities
You can update your external roles and responsibilities in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+ Add content’ and then ‘Activity’, your ‘Personal’ tab and then ‘Activities’. Choose which activities you want to show on your public profile.
You can hide activities from your public profile. Set the visibility as 'Backend' to only show this information within Pure, or 'Confidential' to make it visible only to you.
Biography
Yannis has a background in electrical and electronics engineering coupled with communications and digital signal processing. His doctorate work addressed the challenge of autonomous robots with a biological digestion system and produced the EcoBots family of robots, powered by microbes inside Microbial Fuel Cells, fed with table sugar, grass clippings, prawn shells, rotten fruit and dead flies (amongst other substrates). Keeping practical applications as the ultimate objective of any scientific investigation enabled Yannis to address challenges of technological implementation at different scales, in different environments and fed with different feedstock substrates, going from μL wearable devices to 100’s of Litres Pee Power® urinals serving hundreds of users per day.
Yanni’s research aims to address three main questions: (i) what happens when the lights go out and there is no running water; (ii) how can we work better with nature to repair our environment; (iii) how can we develop truly autonomous biosystems that form part of an ecosystem’s carbon cycle?” Our natural environment is replete with examples of biological systems that are very efficient at managing their own energy, disposing of their own waste and nurturing their surrounding environment. As engineers we have a lot to learn from our natural environment and transfer this knowledge in new engineered biosystems for a range of applications and for future generations.
Being Chair in Environmental Engineering at one of the best Engineering Universities, means that Yannis has a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of the technologies being developed even further, pursuing integration with other treatment technologies, such as anaerobic digestion in real wastewater treatment plants, as well as other industry sectors, contributing to the local economy and beyond.
You can update your biography section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select your ‘Personal’ tab then ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading, and ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘Biography’. Aim for no more than 400 words.
This section will only appear if you enter the information into Pure (opens in a new tab).
Prizes
You can update this section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+Add content’ and then ‘Prize’. using the ‘Prizes’ section.
You can choose to hide prizes from your public profile. Set the visibility as ‘Backend’ to only show this information within Pure, or ‘Confidential’ to make it visible only to you.