Prof. Themelis is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In the first part of his career he developed metallurgical processes for the extraction and refining of copper and other metals, including the Noranda Process that did away with the emission of sulphur to the atmosphere. Later, he was Vice President, Technology of Kennecott Corporation, the largest copper company in the world at that time. At Columbia University, he has been Chair of the School of Mines and, later, first Chair of the new Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He is founder and Director of Columbia’s Earth Engineering Center and Chair of the Global WTERT Council (GWC; www.wtert.org) with sister organizations in fourteen nations, including WTERT-Italy (MatER Study Center of the Politecnico di Milano).
Prof. Themelis is co-author of the waste management section of the IPCC 2014 Assessment Report, editor of the WTE section of the Encyclopaedia of Sustainability of Science and Tchnology (Springer) and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.