Vassilis Charmandaris obtained his BSc in Physics from the University of Thessaloniki in 1989 and his PhD in Astrophysics from Iowa State University (USA) in 1995. His academic genealogy tree is here.
Career :
He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Astrophysics Section of CEA/Saclay in France in 1996. From 1997 until 1999 he was a Marie Curie fellow at Paris Observatory (DEMIRM), where he was also "Chercheur Associe" from 2001 to 2014. In 1999 he moved back to the US and spent 6 years at the Astronomy Department of Cornell University. There he worked on the development of the Infrared Spectrograph of the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was launched by NASA in August 2003. In February 2005, Dr. Charmandaris joined the faculty of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete and he is currently a Professor of Observational Astrophysics. From 2013 until 2018 he served as the Director of the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens and from March 2019 until February 2025 he was the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH, as well as Director of Skinakas Observatory. In April 2022 he was also elected Adjunct Research Professor at the European University Cyprus. Since February 2025 he is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of FORTH.
Interests :
Observational Extragalactic Astrophysics, with emphasis in Space Infrared Astronomy. He has been working mostly on problems related to the properties of the dust, molecular gas depletion, and star formation in interacting galaxies, starbursts and active galactic nuclei.
