Michael Amiridis

Michael Amiridis

Michael Amiridis took office as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago in March 2015. His appointment was formally approved by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees at its Jan. 15, 2015, meeting. For over two decades as a professor, researcher and senior administrator on a flagship research campus, he established a proven record of building academic and research excellence. Prior to arriving at UIC, Amiridis served from 2009 to 2015 as executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where he oversaw all academic functions on the university’s flagship campus and at four, two-year regional campuses. He also shared responsibility for coordinating all budget and capital planning functions. As provost, Amiridis created an “academic dashboard” to help chart the campus’s strategy for growth and excellence by comparing its performance to peer institutions in key areas such as enrollment, research funding, graduation rates and student-faculty ratios. He helped develop a plan that earned board of trustees funding for 200 new tenure and tenure-track positions. His research interests focus on the synthesis and catalytic characterization of bimetallic nanoparticles with controlled composition and architecture. He has received more than $15 million in research funding as a principal investigator and more than $9 million as a co-investigator. He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the American Society for Engineering Education and the North American Catalysis Society. A native of Greece and a U.S. citizen, Amiridis earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He and his wife, Ero Aggelopoulou-Amiridis, have two children.