Born in 1960 in Greece, Dr. Harissopulos is the Head of the Tandem Laboratory of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos". He studied physics at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece and received his PhD in June 1989 from the University of Cologne, Germany. For his PhD, he was granted a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and carried out research in nuclear structure at the Institute of Nuclear Physics (IKP) of the University of Cologne, focussing on lifetime measurements with the plunger method. After his return to Greece, he started as Assistant Professor at the Technological-Educational Institute of Athens (Dept. of Physics and Chemistry). In Dec. 1995, he was elected as a tenure-track research scientist at "Demokritos". In Feb. 1999, he promoted to senior researcher ("Principal Investigator") and in Dec. 2006 to "Director of Research", a position equivalent to that of a University Professor. In the period from June 2003 to May 2004, he was on sabbatical at the University of Bochum, Germany, working with Prof. Claus Rolfs on the study of nuclear reactions relevant to stellar nucleosynthesis and the detection of geo-neutrinos. He has received a number of research grants either as visiting scientist or scientist in charge. He has additionally been convener of two workshops funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the first one entitled "ESF Exploratory Workshop in p-process nucleosynthesis" (2002) and the second one "ESF Workshop on the future of stable beams in nuclear astrophysics" (Dec. 2007).

    S. Harissopulos is currently a member of NuPECC (for Greece) and is representing the Greek funding agency (GSRT) in the FP7-ERA-Net in Nuclear Physics in Europe (NuPNET). He is a founding member of The Hellenic Nuclear Physics Society, elected Secretary from 1994 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2002, and elected President from May 2002 to May 2008. From 2003 to 2005, he served as (elected) member of the Governing Board of the Hellenic Researchers Association. He is member of the European Physical Society and the German Physical Society (DPG). His research activities include experimental nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure, and applications of nuclear methods. He was chair and/or member of a number of International Conferences and Workshops, invited speaker and lecturer in many conferences and schools and referee in several scientific journals. He has served as an Independent External Evaluator of a number of PhD theses abroad. He has approx. 100 publications in referred journals and peer-reviewed conference proceedings with more than 400 citations. He is currently supervising 3 PhD students.   [top] [personal webpage]

Born in 1951, Dr. Fanourakis studied physics at the University of Athens, Greece. He completed his post graduate studies in 1980 at NCSR Demokritos and defended his PhD thesis at the University of Athens (UoA) in the same year. He then moved to US and carried out research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1980-1983 as research associate), and the University of Rochester, (1983-1985 as research associate, and from 1985-1993 as senior researcher). In 1993, Dr. Fanourakis returned to Greece as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Crete. In 1996, he was elected "Principal Researcher" at INP and promoted to "Director of Research" in 2003. Dr. George Fanourakis has been doing research in the field of Particle Physics since 1975, participating in experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA), Fermi National Laboratory (USA) and CERN (Europe). He held leading positions in the design, construction and operation as well as in data analysis of several experiments and research projects such as: E613 (1978-1983) - charmed meson production, E706 (1983-1993) - direct photon production, D0 (1987-1993) - Fermilab Collider experiment, DELPHI (1996-2002) - LEP experiment, CMS (1997-2001) - LHC experiment, ROSE (1997-2003) - radiation hard silicon detectors, CAST (2001-present) - search for solar axions, Micromegas detector development (2001-present) for X-ray detection and low background physics. His scientific record includes more than 230 publications in International refereed journals in Physics Research and many more publications in Conference Proceedings and non-refereed editions. A number of his publications involve development of MicroMegas detectors.

    Dr Fanourakis has been teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level since 1993 at the University of Crete, University of Athens, NCSR Demokritos and Greek National Technical University, and the Greek Open University. He has given seminars on scientific and technological subjects to High School teachers and summer students. He has also developed and given many public lectures in modern science at several places in Greece. Since 1997, the group headed by Dr. Fanourakis has been experimenting with novel science teaching methodology for High School students. Since 2003, Dr. Fanourakis is Chairman of the Scientific Advising Board of the INP, scientist in charge of the educational program of INP, and Chairman of the Outreach Committee of NCSR Demokritos. He is a member of the Greek Society of High Energy Physics.    [top] [personal webpage]

Dr. Karydas, born in 1962 in Greece, is senior researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of "Demokritos".He studied Physics at the Physics Department of the University of Athens and he received his PhD on Analytical Applications of Nuclear Techniques from the Department of Physics of the National Technical University of Athens. In 2002, Dr Karydas was elected by a scientific committee as tenure-track researcher and on December 2006 was promoted to "Principal Investigator", position equivalent to that of a University Associate-Professor. His research activities include development and application of Ion Beam and X-Ray Spectrometric techniques in the interdisciplinary field (environmental science, cultural heritage, and biomedicine). In particular, his current research activities are focused on the study and implementation of 3D μPIXE, development and characterization of an external ion-beam end-station for the combined IBA of cultural heritage artifacts/artworks, development of multipurpose PIXE-XRF technique, development and application of portable milli- and micro- spot X-ray Fluorescence spectrometers for cultural heritage, study of scattering mechanisms between X-rays and atoms (X-ray Resonant Raman Scattering) and study of the second order interactions that produce an enhancement in the XRF intensity.  He has published 51 articles in refereed journals and 27 in special editions, books and conference proceedings with more than 200 citations. He also performs regular referee tasks for the peer review journals: X-Ray Spectrometry, Nuclear Instruments and Methods B', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry and Journal of Archaeological Science. Andreas Karydas has been coordinator and/or scientist in charge in many projects funded by FP6 programmes or by national funding projects, mainly in the fields of cultural heritage, conservation, and development of ion-beam techniques. He has represented Greece as delegate in European actions such as the COST-G1, "Ion beam study of art and archaeological objects" and in COST-G8 "Non-destructive analysis and testing of museum objects" actions as well as in the Regional program RER/1/006 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) entitled "Nuclear-Techniques for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Artefacts"   [top] [personal webpage]

Born in 1961, Dr. Geralis is a Senior Researcher ("Principal Investigator") at the Institute of Nuclear Physics at NCSR Demokritos, Athens, Greece. He studied physics at the University of Athens and graduated in 1983. He completed his post graduate studies in 1985 at NCSR Demokritos and defended his PhD Thesis at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1991. His PhD concerned the study of CP Violation in the K meson at the CPLEAR experiment at CERN, where he contributed very significantly to the completion of the Hardwired Trigger processor and the physics studies of the Neutral Golden channels. He joined the Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (CPPM) group for the period 1988-1991 and the ETH Zurich group, as a post doctoral student, from 1991 to 1993 within the frame of the CPLEAR experiment. During the period 1993-1997 he played a leading role in physics analysis studies (tau-polarization, Bhabha events, luminosity measurements) in the OPAL experiment at LEP, as a Senior Research Associate at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). He was also committed to operating the End Cap Electromagnetic calorimeter of the OPAL experiment. His recent work is devoted in the CMS experiment at LHC and the CAST (CERN Axion Solar Telescope) experiment with the Institute of Nuclear Physics, NCSR Demokritos. He is leading the team that designed and constructed the Global Trigger Processor Emulator (GTPe) for CMS and the Data Acquisition system for the micromegas CAST detectors and he is member of the Institution's Board for the TriDas system in CMS. GTPe is a system build that enables the CMS DAQ system stand alone installation, multi-functioning implementation and upgrade. The Micromegas DAQ has been used since 2003 for the CAST experiment data taking as well as in DAQ systems for the Micromegas development.

    Dr. Geralis is actively involved in the design and development of the Micromegas detector for the CAST experiment and other applications. He is collaborating tightly with the CEA Saclay Micromegas group, which is leaded by I. Giomataris, the inventor of the Micromegas detector. He worked for well known Particle Physics institutes like the CPPM, ETH-Zurich, RAL, NTUA and NCSR Demokritos. He has published 218 papers in peer review High Energy Physics journals and has presented his work in numerous International Conferences. He has also been member of International Conferences Organizing committees. He has been elected three times in the Council of the Greek Society for High-Energy Physics. He is also actively involved in Education: teaching at post graduate and graduate level, supervising of PhD, Master and Diploma theses.   [top] [personal webpage]

Dr Demetriou was born in Athens, Greece, in 1969. She studied physics at the National University of Athens and graduated in 1991. In 1992 she was accepted as DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford and in the same year, she was awarded a scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation after written examination. She obtained her DPhil in Nuclear Reaction Theory at the University of Oxford in February 1996. After her DPhil, she was accepted as a post-doctoral fellow for 6 months at the Université Paris VI in Paris, in the framework of a European Marie Curie Training Network. During that time she worked with the group of Prof. R. Vinh Mau on the famous paris Potential developing the short-range repulsive term from fundamental aspects of the quark model. From 1996 to 1998 she held a post-doctoral fellowship of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy, and carried out research on electromagnetic interactions and the constituent quark model at the Universitá degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia, Italy, with the group of Prof. S. Boffi. From 1998 to 2002 she held a Research Assistant Fellowship at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of NCSR "Demokritos". During this period, she initiated a long-lasting and fruitful collaboration with the INP experimental Nuclear Astrophysics group on nuclear physics aspects of stellar evolution and in particular, on nuclear reactions relevant to the p process of nucleosynthesis. Moreover, she launched the theory program on the development of global microscopic nuclear models for large-scale reaction rate calculations of astrophysical relevance. This program has been running for the past 10 years in close collaboration with the Institut d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique (IAA), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium. For the needs of this programme, she spent 3 months as Visiting Scientist at the IAA in 2000. Parallel to these activities, she has also had ongoing interests in the modelling of nuclear reactions for applications in reactor technology, cancer therapy and space aviation applications. During her term at the INP, she got a grant from the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, for a bilateral cooperation program with Poland from 2000-2002. The program was carried out in collaboration with the A. Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies, Warsaw, Poland and focussed on the development of models for nuclear reactions at low and intermediate energies that are relevant to various applications from nuclear energy to medical physics. In 2002 she was awarded a European Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to carry out research at the IAA, Brussels for two years on the role of fission in the r-process of nucleosynthesis. After the completion of her Marie Curie Fellowship, she remained at the IAA for two more months as visiting Scientist. In 2005, she was a visiting scientist at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium for five months. She worked on nuclear reactions on silicon targets at low and intermediate energies relevant to space aviation applications, and in particular,  to developing radiation-hardened  silicon components. After her term in Louvain-la-Neuve in 2005, she was granted the European Re-integration Grant of the Marie Curie Actions to return to "Demokritos" and work on the development of global alpha-nucleus optical potentials for p-process nucleosynthesis. In December 2006, she was elected tenure-track research scientist. She has been a member of the Organizing Committees of national and International Conferences as well as of two ESF funded Workshops (ESF Exploratory Workshop in p-process nucleosynthesis, 2002 and ESF Workshop on the future of stable beams in nuclear astrophysics, 2007). She is the co-editor of conference proceedings and has been an invited speaker at several Universities and International Conferences and member of the Advisory Committees of international Conferences. She has served as an Independent Evaluator of Research proposals funding agencies abroad and as a referee for Nuclear Physics A and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables. She has approximately 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.   [top] [personal webpage]

Born in 1973, Dr. Lagoyannis, studied physics at the University of Ioannina, Greece and received his PhD in 2001. For his PhD thesis, he carried out experimental work at GANIL, Caen, France, that focussed on the structure of exotic light nuclei using proton scattering in inverse kinematics with radioactive beams. At the same time he was a visiting fellow at CEA-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. After completing his military service in 2003, he was appointed as Research Assistant at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of "Demokritos" and was responsible for the recent upgrade works at the Tandem accelerator. He was a visiting scientist in a few European laboratories in the last 2 years where he carried out research in the fields of nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure. He is responsible for many collaborative programs related to ion-beam-based nuclear analytical techniques. He has been a member of the organizing committees of all recent workshops and international conferences organized by INP. In the last 4 years, he has trained almost the all students who carried out experimental work at the Tandem laboratory for their Diploma in basic nuclear techniques and instrumentation. In December 2007, he was elected tenure-track research scientist. His record includes 40 peer-reviewed articles, and 15 papers in conference proceedings.   [top] [personal webpage]

Born in 1977, Miltiadis Andrianis studied physics at the National University of Athens (UoA) and received his Master's Degree in the field of Electronics and Telecommunications from the Physics-Informatics Department of UoA. His technical studies include a wide range of subjects in the telecommunications field, such as Analog- Digital Electronics, modulation transmission systems, and wireless and wired voice and data networks. He was also engaged in various projects ranging from pure engineering to business analyses. His Master thesis was a project on an OFDM-based modem. He was also involved in various projects including "The Viterbi Algorithm", "Business opportunities through UMTS-WLAN networks", "Risks & options in Capital Investments", "A Mobile Network Dimensioning", Estimation of 3G market services development”, “Parabolic Reflectors" and "Wireless Networks". In his Diploma thesis he designed and implemented a multiplier control unit in FPGA Xilinx and performed a study on enabling technologies for optical amplification for long-haul telecommunications. He has a five-year professional experience as a Lecturer and lab instructor in technical education at the professional development institute. He is responsible for the Operation and Maintenance of the Tandem accelerator.   [top] [personal webpage]

Theo Mertzimekis was born in 1971 in Serres, Greece. He completed his undergraduates studies in Physics at the University of Ioannina in 1993. He took the first steps in research during his graduation project, which involved studies in the area of radiochemistry and environmental nuclear chemistry. He joined the Graduate Program in the University of Ioannina since after his graduation. After completing the required course work he decided to move to the USA and shift his research interests towards fundamental nuclear studies. In 1997, he joined Prof. Noemie Benczer-Koller's group at Rutgers, NJ, under a full-time scholarship of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, focusing on experimental studies of nuclear structure. He obtained his M.S. in Physics in 1999 and gained large experience in measurements of magnetic moments while running a large number of experiments at the Tandem of WNSL, Yale University and the 88" Cyclotron at Berkeley. He defended his Ph.D. Thesis in April 2002 and immediately moved to NSCL, Michigan State University as a Research Associate in Prof. Paul Mantica's group.He stayed at NSCL until 2006 with a one-year break due to his compulsory military service pending back in Greece (2004). His research at NSCL was funded by two NSF Grants and focused on measurements of magnetic moments and beta-decay studies employing radioactive beams. He has served as the spokeperson in two major experiments at NSCL exploring the fundamental properties of neutron-deficient isotopes near the proton-drip line. He also had the opportunity to participate in experiments at the Australian National University and TRIUMF. In 2006, he moved back to the University of Ioannina, accepting a Visiting Assistant Position in the Physics Department till 2008. His concurrent research work dealt mainly with measurements of nuclear cross sections in stable Li isotopes near the Coulomb barrier, receiving funds from the Greek GSRT (Pythagoras I). He has recently moved to the Institute of Nuclear Physics in NSCR "Demokritos", joining LIBRA, as a Research Associate.

  Theo has significant experience in nuclear structure studies. He has worked extensively with a large number of experimental techniques (TF technique, beta NMR, HVTF, re-cyclotron etc) in measurements of several nuclear observables such as electromagnetic moments and lifetimes, carrying out experiments with small and large detection arrays (Gammasphere, YRAST Ball, SeGA etc). He has recently accepted an invitation to join the international collaboration gPRESPEC, with main research activities at GSI. He has also run several experiments at GANIL, France, collaborating with scientists from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, KU Leuven, Belgium and elsewhere, studying the structure of mid-weight exotic isotopes. His published record consists of 34 peer-reviewed publications, 8 papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings and 8 in non-peered conference volumes. He has received more than 300 citations for his published work and excellent evaluations for his teaching. He has delivered 8 seminars after invitation, including an honored talk at the Gordon Conference of Nuclear Chemistry in 2001.   [top] [personal webpage]

Axiotis Michael was born in 1976 in Athens, Greece. He studied physics at the University of Cyprus and received his PhD in 2007 from the Physics Department of the National Technological University of Athens. His PhD thesis was in nuclear structure of nuclei with mass A=50. More precisely he analyzed the high spins of ⁵²Mn with gamma-ray spectroscopy and also using Total Absorption Spectroscopy techniques he studied the beta-decay of ⁵²Fe. In parallel, from 1999 to 2003, he had a fellowship at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro in Italy. There, he was member of the nuclear structure group and helped in the preparation and the running of almost all the experiments done with the GASP spectrometer. He also participated in experiments of the group at other laboratories like IReS, GSI and Cologne and in the building of the Clara spectrometer. Finally for a period of time between 2005 and 2006 he collaborated with Dr Demetriou on the development of global alpha-nucleus optical potentials for p-process nucleosynthesis. [top] [personal webpage]