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 Stavros was born and raised in Thessaloniki, the capital of
Macedonia, Greece, where he received a degree in Forestry from the
Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in 1981. After a short and much
needed break, in January 1982 he went to Syracuse, New York.
There, after enduring five cold winters, and five hot and humid summers, he
somehow managed to receive an M.S. in the field of Wood Composites (August
1983) under the guidance of a great mentor and fun chap; Dr. Len Smith.
Thereafter, he received a Ph.D. in the field of Wood Physics (August 1986)
under the guidance of a legend; the late Dr. John F. Siau. Both degrees
were awarded from the State University of New York, College of Environmental
Science and Forestry with little fanfare.
Surprisingly, Stavros never made it to any graduation ceremony.
While considering career options Stavros went to New York City and
blew all his savings in less than a month. Lucky him, he had already
accepted a position at UBC with the then Department of Harvesting and Wood
Science. Penniless, he landed at YVR on October 16, 1986 and although he
caught the last few days of EXPO ‘86, in return, Vancouver “caught” him for good. In 1987,
after spending 8 months working with a bunch of great folks at Forintek,
UBC made him a faculty position offer that he could not refuse – long
working hours for a starting salary that was way below of what a Post-Doc
makes nowadays. He took the job without second thought – Vancouver magic.
At UBC, Stavros teaches courses related to wood physics, wood
drying, and recently, sawmilling and advanced mathematics using (at least he
tries…) the old Socratic teaching (dialectical) method that tries to
stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. Stavros has mentored many
undergraduate and post-graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and visiting
researchers - a service to education, training and human development that
he immensely enjoys. He takes great pleasure in the scientific and human
challenges and interactions provided by the many visitors from various
parts of the world who came over in the past and still come here to UBC to
enjoy the spectacular city of Vancouver and maybe work with Stavros…
On the research side, Stavros has completed numerous competitive and
contract research projects in the areas of wood-water relationships, and
fundamental and applied. Understanding the sorption and diffusion of
moisture in wood by using fractal theory and artificial neural network
modelling, the wood’s heating and electrical characteristics, conventional
and novel drying methods to improve quality of lumber, developing radio
frequency vacuum drying for various wood species (softwoods and hardwoods),
and the modelling of heat and mass transfer, and stresses during timber
drying are some of his initial esoteric research foci. With age, his focus
has become increasingly fuzzy and his research interests moved outside numerical
analysis and the lab. Close works with the local forest products industry
on developing methods to improve commercial drying processes for thick
lumber, developing non-destructive id methods for wet-pockets in hemlock
and using RF heating to pasteurize wet wood has also become a major
time-consuming endeavour. He has been very active in the development and
commercialization of RFV drying for wood and wood products – a journey that
started in 1989 and still continues.
He is a member of many international professional organizations, a member
of national and international R&D and policy committees, a member of
scientific journal editorial boards, project reviewer and monitor for the
European Union, USDA, NSF and NSERC, standing reviewer with many scientific
journals, past UBC Senate member, member of numerous university, faculty
and departmental committees, and the author and co-author of over 200
publications. Lastly, Stavros is a Fellow of the institute of Wood Science
and a Fellow of the International Academy of Wood Science.
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