Konstantinos Kostarelos

Dr. Kostarelos earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, working on an inter-disciplinary team that adapted several petroleum industry technologies for environmental applications with Gary Pope’s group. While there, he lead a research effort on a new concept called “Neutral Buoyancy Approach,” which is an extension of Surfactant Enhanced Aquifer Remediation (SEAR) directed at recovering hazardous liquids (DNAPLs) from the subsurface. The research group also adapted various enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques for the purpose of recovering DNAPLs: partitioning interwell tracer testing (PITT) and polymer-based viscosifiers are two examples.

Before joining the University of Houston, Dr. Kostarelos was on the faculty at The University of Cyprus where he and his colleagues have founded the NIREAS International Water Research Center, which included his Subsurface Research Laboratory and resulted in an award of 2.5M Euros. His research interests in the area of flow in porous media and fracture flow include EOR technologies, PITT, among others. His work has also involved development of an NIR-based, optical fiber chemical sensor that could be used in the subsurface environment. See the RESEARCH tab for a listing of current research projects.