Dr. Stelios (Stylianos) Stefanidis (Male, Chemical Engineer), obtained his PhD from the University of Western Macedonia in 2016 after defending his thesis on the topic of “Catalytic pyrolysis of biomass for the production of alternative biofuels and high-added value chemical products”, which was carried out at the Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) in Thessaloniki, Greece. Between 2018 and 2020, he was a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow at Aston University in Birmingham, UK, where he worked on the synthesis, characterisation and evaluation of hierarchical zeolites as catalysts in the catalytic pyrolysis of biomass. Since 2020, he has been an Associate Researcher at CPERI-CERTH, where he is working on the development of catalytic thermochemical and hydrothermal processes for the valorisation of biomass and solid wastes to fuels and chemical products. He has co-authored 32 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, which have accumulated over 2,800 citations, and has an h-index of 22 (Scopus, Jan 2024).

Ms. Maria Misia is a graduate of the Department of Oil and Gas Technology of the Technological Institute of Kavala and has been a member of the Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) since 2006. She has extensive experience in catalyst testing and thermochemical conversion of biomass. She is an experienced operator of bench-scale and semi-pilot scale experimental units for the slow and fast pyrolysis of biomass towards the production of biochar and bio-oil. She is also experienced in the physicochemical characterization of biomass via wet chemistry methods, as well as in the physicochemical characterization of fuels and biofuels. She has actively participated in the successful implementation of more than 25 national and international research projects.

Ms. Anna-Maria Tzika is a Chemical Engineer and has been a Research Assistant at the Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) since 2017. Her expertise is focused on the pretreatment and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass using autoclave reactors, covering both the practical and analytical aspects. This includes sample preparation by dilution, filtration, extraction and evaporation, and analytical techniques such as gas chromatography, ion chromatography and UV spectroscopy. She is also an experienced operator of thermal and catalytic pyrolysis semi-pilot plant units. She was also a member of LEFH’s Analytical Laboratory, where she conducted analyses to determine the properties and evaluate the quality of fuels and bio-liquids via density measurements, calorific value measurements, titrations and determination of elemental composition.