Dr Costas Velis is an international expert on circular economy and resource recovery from waste. An academic at the School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, in the UK, he coordinates across the University a cross-disciplinary network on Circular Economy & Resource Recovery (CERRY), and manages a solid waste characterization laboratory. Dr Velis leads the ISWA Marine Litter Task Force, aiming at establishing the clear link between sound waste and resource management practices and the prevention of marine litter global challenge.
Dr Velis holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Cranfield University, an MSc in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development form Imperial College London, and a BSc in Physics from University of Athens, specializing in Environmental Physics. A Chartered Waste Manager by CIWM, and registered with the Institute of Physics (MInstP), with over 14 years of work and research experience in innovation for waste and resources management, he serves in many international committees and initiatives addressing relevant challenges of global scale, including the prestigious seminal Global Waste Management Outlook released by UNEP. Dr Velis has a wide research portfolio as PI and Co-I, and his wider expertise covers topics from informal sector recycling in the Global South, to the production and quality assurance of solid recovered fuels (SRF), to holistic systems assessment such as circular economy for waste plastics.
Dr Velis is Vice Chair of the ISWA European Group; Head of the Waste Atlas Partnership Scientific Committee; and Vice Chair of the Waste to Energy Resource and Technology Council – UK. Published in leading academic journals and having delivered invited lectures all over the world, he offers to his profession as Associate Editor of the academic journals Waste Management & Research, and Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology. Costas’s academic research papers have been honored with many prestigious Awards, including those from ICE, CIWM and ISWA.