 Konstantinidis |
Karen and John Huff School Chair Donald Webster has named Kostas Konstantinidis the Maulding Faculty Fellow in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The appointment reflects Konstantinidis’ prolific research efforts in environmental microbiology and its intersections with engineering, genomics and computational biology.
“The Maulding Faculty Fellowship will allow me to continue a highly productive research program and take risks when new opportunities arise,” said Konstantinidis, who has been the Carlton S. Wilder Associate Professor and was promoted this year to full professor. He said the resources from such an endowed position allow him to take risks that open up productive new areas of inquiry.
“These discretionary funds allowed me and my collaborators at Emory University to explore new ideas and opportunities in the role of the environment in shaping the human microbiome and health during the last three years, which has resulted in two new collaborative National Institutes of Health grants,” he said.
Konstantinidis said he also intends “to support students’ and post-doctoral scholars’ participation in national and international conferences where they can present their work, which strongly enriches students’ experience and networking.”
The Maulding family endowment provides funding to support the School at the chair’s discretion.
Konstantinidis joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2007 and has become a leading researcher broadening our understanding of the genetic and metabolic diversity of the smallest organisms on the planet. He also works to design new biotechnological applications of the planet’s microbiome to clean up environmental pollutants and assess water quality.