Ilias Stamatiou studied chemical engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). He completed his MSc in Applied Process Control at the Newcastle University in 2014 with distinction, and since then, he has joined the University of Leeds. He obtained his PhD from the School of Chemical and Process Engineering in 2018, conducting his research on the characterisation of mass transfer behaviour of three-phase batch and continuous flow reactors. His project was fully funded by EPSRC and under the sponsorship of the leading agrochemical company Syngenta. Currently, he is research fellow in the Richard Bourne’s group working on reactor automation and self-optimisation. He is interested in process modelling, control and optimisation, and in the generation of new process understanding.