Maravelias, the Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment and chair of chemical and biological engineering, studies the complex technological systems used to produce and distribute energy, with a focus on clean and renewable energy for industrial use. Using computer models, Maravelias seeks to optimize how disparate systems and technologies work together, increasing efficiency, lowering costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving supply chains. While most research on renewable energy focuses on individual technologies or components, Maravelias looks for bottlenecks throughout the entire conglomerate supersystem, an approach that has helped accelerate the energy transition across several sectors. 

The award comes “for defining a chemical approach to nanomaterials leading to efficient gas-phase heterogeneous CO2 photocatalysis,” a collaborative project that involved 23 researchers from across several institutions. In a 2019 paper, the team laid out a pathway to use chemicals that feed natural processes — water, carbon dioxide and light — to create methanol for industrial use. Methanol is used in roughly 30% of all global industrial chemicals, according to the team, accounting for $55 billion in annual economic activity. Conventional methods rely on natural gas and, to a lesser extent, coal. The team’s innovative approach, drawing on a range of technologies and processes, would dramatically reduce the environmental impacts of methanol production, saving massive amounts of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions compared to today’s standard systems.

Maravelias joined the Princeton CBE faculty in 2020 with a shared appointment in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Earlier this year, he was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Previous honors include a 2024 AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Research Award, a Production and Operations Management Society Applied Research Challenge Award and an NSF CAREER Award, among many others. Maravelias received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree from the National Technical University of Athens. In 2021, Maravelias published a monograph titled “Chemical Production Scheduling” with Cambridge University Press. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals.