Dr. Sotiria Koloutsou-Vakakis holds a Diploma degree (National Technical University of Athens, 1985) in Civil-Surveying engineering, an M.A.(University of California, Los Angeles, 1990) in Geography, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993 and 1996) in Environmental Engineering.

She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in air quality and statistics.

An air quality researcher, Dr. Koloutsou-Vakakis has worked on the policy-making aspects of climate change and ozone layer protection. In 1997, she held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and in 1998-1999 she was a NSF-NATO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Athens, Greece.