Stephanopoulos was born in 1950 and grew up in Kalamata, Greece, located on the southern end of the Peloponnese peninsula. In 1973, he earned his diploma in chemical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He continued his studies at the University of Florida, where he received a master's degree in chemical engineering in 1975. He completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1975, with advisors Arnold Fredrickson and Rutherford Aris on the topic of modeling of population dynamics. He thesis was published in 1978 with the title, "Mathematical Modelling of the Dynamics of Interacting Microbial Populations. Extinction Probabilities in a Stochastic Competition and Predation".
Career
Stephanopoulos began his career as an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 1978. He was promoted to associate professor in 1978. In 1985, he was hired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as professor of chemical engineering. During his time at MIT, he has held the following positions: Associate Director, Biotechnology Center, Professor of the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Science and Technology - HST, Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and the W. H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. From 2006 to 2007, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering in Zürich, Switzerland. As noted in the citation for his ENI Prize, Stephanopoulos's research has addressed the advancement of multiple aspects bioengineering:
Works
Books
H. W. Blanch, E. T. Papoutsakis and Gregory Stephanopoulos, Foundations of Biochemical Engineering, Kinetics and Thermodynamics of Biological System. ACS Symposium Series, 207.
M. N. Karim and G. Stephanopoulos. Modelling and Control of Biotechnical Processes. IFAC Symposia Series No. 10, Proceedings of the 5th Int. Conf. of Computer App. in Ferm. Tech., Keystone, CO, 29 March - 2 April 1992, Pergamon Press.
G. Stephanopoulos, Bioprocessing, Vol. 3 of Biotechnology, H. J. Rehm, G. Reed, A. Puhler, P. Stadler, VCH, Weinheim.
G. Stephanopoulos, Jens Nielsen, and A. Aristidou. Metabolic Engineering. Principles and Methodologies. Academic Press.
G. Stephanopoulos Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Metabolic Engineering. Special Issue, Biotechnology & Bioengineering, Issues 2 & 3,.
Isidore Rigoutsos and G. Stephanopoulos, Systems Biology. Volume 1 and 2, Oxford University Press,
Journal articles
Stephanopoulos has authored more than 400 journal articles on the topics of biotechnology, bioinformatics, and metabolic engineering. These include:
Gregory Stephanopoulos, R. Aris, A. G. Fredrickson. "A stochastic analysis of the growth of competing microbial populations in a continuous biochemical reactor", Mathematical Biosciences 45, 99-135,.
Gregory Stephanopoulos, R. Aris, A. G. Fredrickson. "The growth of competing microbial populations in a CSTR with periodically varying inputs", AIChE Journal 25, 863-872,.
G. Stephanopoulos, A. G. Fredrickson. ""Coexistence of Photosynthetic Microorganisms with Growth Rates Depending on the Spectral Quality of Light", Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 41, 525-542,.
G. Stephanopoulos, A. G. Fredrickson. "The Effect of Spatial Inhomogeneities on the Coexistence of Competing Microbial Populations", Biotechnology and Bioengineering 21, 1491-1498,.
Rahul Singhvi, Amit Kumar, Gabriel P. Lopez, Gregory N. Stephanopoulos, D. I. Wang, George M. Whitesides, Donald E. Ingber "Engineering cell shape and function", Science, 264, 696-698,.
Hal Alper, Curt Fischer, Elke Nevoigt, Gregory Stephanopoulos. "Tuning genetic control through promoter engineering", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 12678,.
Parayil Kumaran Ajikumar, Wen-Hai Xiao, Keith E. J. Tyo, Yong Wang, Fritz Simeon, Effendi Leonard, Oliver Mucha, Too Heng Phon, Blaine Pfeifer, Gregory Stephanopoulos. "Isoprenoid pathway optimization for Taxol precursor overproduction in Escherichia coli", Science, 330, 70-74,.
Christian M Metallo, Paulo A. Gameiro, Eric L. Bell, Katherine R. Mattaini, Juanjuan Yang, Karsten Hiller, Christopher M Jewell, Zachary R Johnson, Darrell J. Irvine, Leonard Guarente, Joanne K. Kelleher, Matthew G. Vander Heiden, Othon Iliopoulos, Gregory Stephanopoulos. "Reductive glutamine metabolism by IDH1 mediates lipogenesis under hypoxia", Nature, 481, 380,.
Honors
In 2003, Stephanopoulos was elected a member of the American National Academy of Engineering. His NAE election citation noted: Other awards and honors include:
