Despo Fatta-Kassinos - Biography#

Despo Fatta-Kassinos is a Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Former (Founding) Director of the first water research center of Cyprus (Nireas-IWRC) at the University of Cyprus. With a Chemical Engineering background, her record includes 189 publications in refereed journals and 135 papers in international conferences. Her expertise focuses on advanced chemical oxidation processes, contaminants of emerging concern, and antimicrobial resistance wastewater technical systems.

Since 2018 she is a Highly Cited Researcher (Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics). In 2022, she received the Noack Laboratorien Outstanding Science Career Award by The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC).

She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the CRETUS Research Center of the University of the Santiago de Compostela, of the Catalan Institute for Water Research in Spain, and the Chair of the Advisory Board of the African Center of Excellence in Water and Environment Research in Nigeria. She has served as the Chair of the Scientific and Technological Advisory Board of the European JPI ‘Water Challenges for a Changing World’ (2015-2019), and she was the founding leader of the Working Group 5 ‘Wastewater reuse’ of NORMAN Association. In 2023 she was appointed as one of the 8 members of the Expert Advisory Committee of the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Solving Antimicrobial Resistance in Agribusiness, Food, and Environments, and as a member of the International Scientific Committee of OneWater, France (CNRS-BRGM-INRAE).

She has been actively engaged in a diverse range of speaking engagements, including plenary/keynote talks and workshops, covering topics on water security and wastewater treatment.

She has been highly successful in securing research funding, with a total of 14,4 € awarded since 2003. She was the Coordinator of the ANSWER project (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015/675530) (with budget: 3.7 M€), and the Chair of the COST Action NEREUS ES1403, pioneering topics on wastewater treatment/reuse.

She is Executive Editor of the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering and Editor in Water Research, Elsevier. She has published the children’ s book on water, entitled “The Secret Handbook of Blue Circle”, published by the International Water Association in 2019.