Elias Kiritsis

Elias Kiritsis was born in 1962 in a small mountain village of central Greece. He has studied to become a physicist and he obtained his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1988. He has subsequently worked as a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley (1988-91), and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1991-92). From 1992-98 he was staff member at the Theory Division at CERN. Today he is professor of physics at the University of Crete (since 1999). He is also “Director of Research” at CNRS in France since 2002. He was associated with the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique at Ecole Polytechnique (2002-2008) and since 2009, with the laboratory «Astroparticule et Cosmologie» of Université Paris 7. He has held short term, visiting positions in several European and American Universities. He is known for his research in particle physics and cosmology. He has contributed to the understanding of phenomenological aspects of string theory, proposed new models in cosmology motivated from branes and strings, and has been recently utilizing string theory techniques to understand the physics of black holes, the deconfined phase of Quantum Chromodynamics and strong interactions in condensed matter physics. His research work has more than 11000 citations and his h-index is 62. He is the author of two books on string theory (from Princeton University Press and Leuven University Press). He has lectured at 35 international advanced schools and foreign PhD programs, gave plenary talks to more than 180 international conferences and organized 48 high-level conferences and workshops in several countries. He has supervised 7 PhD students and more than 60 postdoctoral researchers.