Apostolis Sambanis, Ph.D.

Dr. Sambanis is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Director of the Emergency Management and Continuity Planning Program at UIC's School of Public Health and Vice President of Sustainability at Sloan. He has focused full-time on environmental consulting for over fifteen years and has worked for large private sector companies: True Value, Honeywell, and Henkel. Specifically, his work has focused on curtailing energy, waste, and water. His current position at Sloan involves developing, managing, and constantly improving the sustainability program across the company. Specifically, this work includes leading global governance, processes, and systems to ensure the company is leading the industry in its socio-economic systems toward sustainability, & WELL standards. This position is also responsible for developing the company’s corporate social responsibility strategy, implementing programs to drive citizenship performance, and elevating Sloan Valve Company’s profile as a leading corporate citizen. This also includes ensuring the company is leading in ESG, GHG, and other relevant global standards related to sustainability.

Dr. Sambanis's academic accomplishments include being a geographic information system, Spatial Analysis and Decision Assistance (SADA), and HAZUS expert. This work, combined with his strong quantitative background, creates the ideal profile for his current risk visualization and decision-support research content for managing disasters or measuring resilience. Examples of his research projects include the following:
An evaluation of a geospatial health risk computer program funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency known as SADA, implementing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent Building Resilience against Climate Effects adaptation framework for the state of Illinois, and developing a Private Sector Integration Plan for the creation of logistical inventory software to be used during a disaster response event. In addition, his work includes course content creation, research publications, and conference presentations on environmental justice, sustainability, and resilience planning. He always wants to align himself with similar interests, learning the way through working in similar impactful positions.

Specialties include but are not limited to project management, researching, and lecturing in environmental risk assessment, mitigation, resilience, health and safety, sustainability, and emergency response.

Sambanis A., Kim S., Osiecki K., Cailas M.D. A new approach to the social vulnerability indices: Decision tree-based vulnerability classification model. Research Brief No. 114. Illinois Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois at Chicago. Chicago, IL. September 2019

Jagai J.S., Grossman E., Navon L., Sambanis A., & Dorevitch S.  Hospitalizations for heat-stress illness varies between rural and urban areas: an analysis of Illinois data, 1987–2014. Environ Health 16, 38 (2017) doi:10.1186/s12940-017-0245-1

Stumpf M., Sambanis A., Cailas M., Utilizing HAZUS and PACER SURGE to map and characterize hospitals in Illinois within the New Madrid seismic zone. Progress in Disaster Science. Vol 4. December 2019. doi:10.1016/j.pdisas.2019.100048