Atanassov - CV

Plamen Atanassov, Ph.D. is Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He received his M.S. in Chemical Physics and Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Sofia in 1987 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Following early appointments at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and as Visiting Scientist at the Frumkin Institute of Electrochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he relocated to the United States in 1992 and joined the University of New Mexico as research faculty, where he contributed to the development of electrochemical biosensor technologies.

In 2000, he joined the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering at UNM as a faculty member. He later served as Founding Director of the UNM Center for Emerging Energy Technologies from 2008 to 2011 and as Associate Dean for Research of the UNM School of Engineering from 2012 to 2013. He has served as Principal Investigator on numerous federally funded research programs supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Professor Atanassov’s research is focused on electrocatalysis and electrochemical energy systems, with emphasis on non-platinum and platinum-group metal catalysts for fuel cells, advanced batteries and power sources, enzymatic biofuel cells, and electrochemical sensor systems. He has authored over 220 peer-reviewed publications with more than 8,000 citations (h-index 38), co-edited the book Enzymatic Fuel Cells: From Fundamentals to Applications (Wiley), and is an inventor on more than 28 issued U.S. patents. He is the founder of Pajarito Powder LLC and an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, and the International Society of Electrochemistry.