Elias Franses is a Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Charles D. Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1974, and his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1979. His Ph. D. Thesis was on the phase behavior and interfacial tension studies of surfactant systems, with focus on enhanced oil recovery. He has been working at Purdue University since 1979, and was promoted to Professor in 1988.
His main interests have included: (a) surfactant science and engineering, including phase behavior, rheology, micelles, vesicles, surface tension, and interfacial tension; (b) applications to enhanced oil recovery and lung surfactant replacement formulations; (c) dynamic and equilibrium surface and interfacial tensions; (d) colloidal and interfacial phenomena, including stability of colloidal and non-colloidal dispersions and suspensions against agglomeration and sedimentation; and (e) solid sorbents and sorbent-solvent-sorbate interactions of chiral molecules for chiral bioseparations of enantiomers. He has coauthored about 150 refereed publications, and wrote a textbook on "Thermodynamics, with Chemical Engineering Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He has advised or co-advised 28 Ph. D. students, in Chemical Engineering.
He was the director for the research funding program on Interfacial, Transport, and Separation Processes at the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1991. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science from 1999 to 2001, and editor of the journal Colloids and Surfaces A, Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, from 1992 to 1996.
