Eleftherios (Terry) Papoutsakis is the Unidel Eugene DuPont Professor at the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. Papoutsakis has made important contributions in both animal-cell biotechnology and microbial biotechnology. Animal-cell biotechnology includes seminal work on mixing and agitation in cell-culture bioreactors, stem-cell bioengineering and the use of extracellular vesicles for applications in cell and gene therapies. Microbial biotechnology contributions include clostridia genetics, microbial stress tolerance, and synthetic biology/metabolic engineering. Recent emphasis is on syntrophic clostridial co-cultures for CO2 fixation for sustainable manufacturing of chemicals and materials, & synthetic methylotrophy based on the E. coli platform.
He has been recognized by numerous awards, including election to National Academy of Engineering (NAE), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the 2022 William Walker Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the 2022 SIMB Charles Thom Award, the 2017 Amer. Chemical Society (ACS) E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, the 2013 DIC Wang for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering (SBE/AIChE), the 2012 James E. Bailey Award, (SBE/AIChE); election as ACS Fellow, the 2010 Metabolic Engineering Award, the 2005 Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, the 2004 Merck Cell Culture Engineering Award, and the 2003 Alpha Chi Sigma Award from AIChE.
He received his undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens and his MS/PhD from Purdue University. He has supervised over 70 PhD, 30 MS, 35 postdoctoral and 80 undergraduate research students, funded by over $60 million in grants from NSF, NIH, DOE, ARPA-E, ONR & ARO.