Alexander Mitsos is a Full Professor (W3) in RWTH Aachen University, and the Director of the Laboratory for Process Systems Engineering (AVT.SVT), comprising 40 research and administrative staff. Mitsos received his Dipl-Ing from University of Karlsruhe in 1999 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 2006, both in Chemical Engineering. Prior appointments include military service, free-lance engineering, involvement in a start-up company, a junior research group leader position in the Aachen Institute of Computational Engineering Science and the Rockwell International Assistant Professorship at MIT. Mitsos has over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has received a number of awards. His research focuses on optimization of energy and chemical systems and development of enabling numerical algorithms.