| Spas Kolev is Professor of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry of the University of Melbourne. He graduated from the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) in 1982 and completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Ernö Pungor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary) in 1988. After joining the University of Twente (The Netherlands) for 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow he worked as a lecturer and senior lecturer at the University of Sofia until 1996 when he accepted a postdoctoral position at La Trobe University. In 2001 he joined the University of Melbourne as a lecturer and was subsequently promoted to senior lecturer (2003), associate professor and reader (2007), and professor (2012). |
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Most of Spas Kolev’s research is focused in the areas of flow analysis techniques, including paper-based microfluidics; chemical sensors, development of polymer inclusion membranes for separation or synthesis of metallic nanoparticles; and phytoremediation and phytomining. He has published over 190 refereed articles, 4 book chapters and has co-edited a book entitled ‘Advances in Flow Injection Analysis and Related Techniques’ (Elsevier, 2008). He has given close to 50 invited, keynote or plenary lectures at international conferences.
Spas Kolev has been awarded 9 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants and in 6 of them he has been the lead or sole investigator. His research has been supported by ARC and industry funding totalling close to $10 million.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions to his fields of research, Spas Kolev has been awarded the Ronald Belcher Memorial Award (Talanta, 1988), the Lloyd Smythe Medal of the Analytical Chemistry Division of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2009), the Medal of the Japanese Association for Flow Injection Analysis (2010), the Grimwade Prize in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Melbourne (2012), the Max O’Connor Prize for Chemistry from La Trobe University (2017), and the Environmental Chemistry Medal of the Analytical and Environmental Chemistry Division of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2017).
He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Membranes (MDPI), Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Chemical Sciences (GSTF) and member of the Editorial/Advisory Boards of Analytica Chimica Acta (Elsevier), Talanta (Elsevier), Environmental Modeling and Assessment (Springer), Sensors (MDPI), Challenges (MDPI), and the International Journal of Analytical Chemistry (Hindawi).
Spas Kolev is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.