Zdravko Kravanja is a Professor and the Dean in the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. He joined the university after several years in industry (1981-1985), and currently leads the Laboratory for Process Systems Engineering and Sustainable Development. He was Visiting Researcher (1988-89) and Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (1997), and Guest Professor at Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Lyngby on several occasions (1998-). He is a member of the Working Party for Computer Aided Process Engineering (WP-CAPE) and the Working Party on Education at the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE). He served as Chairman (2007-2010) of The European Committee for the Use of Computers in Chemical Engineering Education (EURECHA). He was also President of the Slovenian Academic Association for Engineering and Natural Sciences (SATENA) (2010-2011).
His research over the years has been devoted mainly to the development of algorithmic techniques, strategies, and computerised tools for sustainable Process Systems Engineering, including Heat Integration. Together with Professor Grossmann, he has developed a unique mixed-integer process synthesizer shell called MIPSYN. It has been applied to the synthesis of heat integrated reactor networks, separation networks, heat and mass exchanger networks, as well as to whole processes, and as a version TOP (Topology Optimizer) to different mechanical steel structures. Other topics of interest are synthesis under uncertainty with a large number of uncertain parameters (100), synthesis of heat integrated water networks, synthesis of Total Sites, and the development of multilevel approaches for global optimization. Recently, his research has been oriented towards the synthesis of sustainable systems using multi-objective optimization and the development of sustainability measurements by which it is possible to convert multi-objective to single-objective problems, e.g. sustainability profit and sustainability net present value. Together with his colleagues Doc. Dr. Lidija Čuček and Ddr. Andreja Nemet he developed code TransGen for the synthesis and retrofit of large-scale Total Sites, which was recently applied to an existing refinery. He has (co)-authored more than 150 publications in scientific journals.