Christos Markides

Biography:

Christos Markides was born in Athens (Greece) in 1978, and grew up first in Johannesburg (South Africa) until the age of 7 and then in Limassol (Cyprus). After finishing school in 1995 and attending compulsory military service from 1995 to 1997, he left Cyprus to undertake a 4-year MEng degree in Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Following this first degree, he did a PhD in Energy Technologies, also at the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Epaminondas (Nondas) Mastorakos, which he completed in 2005.

After completing his education, he worked for a short time as a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) at Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED) while also being a Fellow and Engineering Director of Studies at Robinson College. In 2006 he co-founded a spin-out of company, which was embedded in CUED, to develop a thermally powered fluid pumping technology based on a two-phase thermofluidic oscillator concept. He acted as the company's Technical Director until 2008, when he was awarded a 5-year co-current Fellowship by the Research Council's UK (RCUK) and (then) Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd (FWEL); later acquired by John Wood Group. He was appointed to the post of Lecturer in Clean Energy Processes at the Department of Chemical Engineering of Imperial College in late 2008. He became Senior Lecturer in 2014, Reader in 2016 and Professor in 2018.

He now leads the Clean Energy Processes (CEP) Laboratory, coordinates the Experimental Multiphase Flow (EMF) Laboratory, which is the largest such experimental space at Imperial College London, and is a Co-Founder and Director of recent spin-out company Solar Flow;

Research Interests

• Methods, processes, components, technologies and systems for the collection, recovery, utilization, conversion and/or storage of energy for heating, cooling and power, novel 'total energy' integration schemes in high-efficiency systems with emphasis on renewable and waste heat, and solar energy
• Hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) collectors and solar combined cooling, heating and power (S-CCHP) trigeneration systems in distributed applications
• Waste-heat recovery and conversion to heating, cooling and/or power with advanced cycles
• Thermal energy storage and large-scale electrical energy storage via thermal processes
• Nuclear energy thermohydraulics and next-generation thermodynamic power systems
• Thermodynamics and fluid flow/heat transfer effects in conversion devices and machines, heat exchangers and other high-performance components
• Transport processes, heat and fluid flows in energy technologies, urban environments, physiological systems, etc., including turbulent, inhomogeneous, multiphase and reacting flows
• Multiphase and interfacial flows, including horizontal, vertical or inclined liquid-liquid or gas-liquid flows
• Novel fluid mixing and bioreactor design and characterization
• Autoignition, combustion and post-ignition flame propagation phenomena
• Gasification of heavy oil, and coal and syngas production
• Development and application of advanced diagnostics: high-resolution intrusive and non-intrusive (optical/laser-based) techniques for the measurement for velocity, turbulence, species, concentration, phase distribution, temperature, heat flux and reaction with particle image velocimetry (PIV), particle tracking velocimetry (PTV), laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), infrared (IR) thermography, and related techniques