Stefanos GEORGIADIS completed his master's degree at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece in 2019 and shortly afterwards began his doctoral studies at TU Wien and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia as part of a cotutelle agreement. The aim of his dissertation was to understand and analyze diffusive and thermal effects in multicomponent systems for gas mixtures using nonlinear partial differential equations. In particular, the thesis dealt with Maxwell-Stefan and related systems, which were already proposed 150 years ago by Maxwell and independently by Stefan. The analysis could only be carried out in recent years because the understanding of the cross-diffusion equations had only recently advanced sufficiently.

What is remarkable about the dissertation is the combination of mathematical theory with consistent thermodynamics. The understanding of the thermodynamic relationships was a crucial help in the mathematical analysis using entropy methods. The dissertation is based on five scientific papers and one conference contribution, which is well above average for a doctorate. Accordingly, the reviewers Prof. Ewelina ZATORSKA (Warwick, UK) and Prof. Vincent GIOVANGIGLI (Paris, France) were very positive about the performance of Stefanos Georgiadis who successfully defended the thesis on 17 June 2024. He will remain at KAUST for a short time before starting a postdoctoral position at the University of L'Aquila (Italy).