PhD Student

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PhD Students
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PhD Student

Sidiropoulos

ChrysostomosSidiropoulos
Education

Chrysostomos Sidiropoulos graduated from the high school of Hellenic College of Thessaloniki in 2020 with a grade of 19.6/20 (‘Excellent’). That same year, he was admitted to the Department of Physics at the University of Ioannina to pursue his undergraduate studies. He graduated in the summer of 2024 and started his MSc in "Advanced Physics" in the Department of Physics at the University of Crete. He was awarded his MSc in the fall of 2025 and commenced his PhD.

Career

In 2021, he became a member of the ExoClock Project, which supports the ARIEL mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2024, he completed his thesis titled "Solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equations for neutron stars with polytropic equations of state and continuous speed of sound," under the supervision of Professor Panagiota Kanti. His MSc thesis, performed under the supervision of Dr. Casadio, was entitled "Do intervening clusters significantly enhance the millilensing probability for distant compact radio sources?".

Interests

Theoretical Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark matter, Strong Gravitational Lensing, Compact Objects

Email
Office
308 Physics Bldg
Affiliation
Name
Chrysostomos
Supervisor
Casadio
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Female
Off
Starting Month
11

Diamantopoulos

VasilisDiamantopoulos
Education

Vasilis Diamantopoulos received his High School Diploma from the 8th General High School of Peristeri in 2018. He earned a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Crete in 2024 and an M.Sc. in Advanced Physics with specialisation in Astrophysics and Space Physics in 2025. Since November 2025, he has been a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Anthony C. S. Readhead. His University of Crete faculty liaison is Prof. V. Pavlidou

Career

In 2024 he completed his bachelor’s thesis titled “X-ray Variability Studies of NGC 4051” under the supervision of Prof. Iossif Papadakis. During his M.Sc. he worked with Prof. Papadakis on the energy dependence of the X-ray variability of NGC 4051 and NGC 4395. He presented his M.Sc. thesis in July 2025. His Ph.D. research will focus on Compact Symmetric Objects (CSOs), using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), under the supervision of Prof. Anthony C. S. Readhead.

Interests

His interests include Extragalactic Astronomy, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), Radio Astronomy and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Compact Symmetric Objects (CSOs), Gravitational Lensing, Observational Cosmology, and the teaching of Physics laboratories.
 

Email
Office
232 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4239
Affiliation
Name
Vasilis
Supervisor
Readhead, Pavlidou
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Female
Off
Starting Month
11

Agianoglou

EmmanouilAgianoglou
Education

Emmanouil Agianoglou graduated from the 2nd High School of Korydallos in 2018 with a grade of 19.5/20 ('Excellent'). The same year he started his undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics at the University of Crete. He obtained his BSc in 2024 and after completing his MSc in Advanced Physics in the fall of 2025, he commenced his PhD.

Career

In 2023 he joined the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH, when he started working on his senior thesis concerning modeling the early phases of star formation under the supervision of Prof. Tassis. He is working towards his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Tassis and Dr. Tritsis.

Interests

Theoretical astrophysics, star formation, active galactic nuclei, cosmology

Email
Office
230 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4256
Affiliation
Name
Emmanouil
Supervisor
Tassis, Tritsis
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Departure Date
Female
Off
Starting Month
11

Belgiovine

NicoloBelgiovine
Education

Nicolò Belgiovine obtained his bachelor’s degree in Astronomy in 2021 at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy. In the same year he started, at the same institution, the MSc program in Astrophysics and Cosmology, completed in 2025. As of September 20205 he is  a Ph.D. student at the Physics Department of the Univ. of Crete under the supervision of Prof. I. Papadakis.

Career

During his last year of his undergraduate studies he worked on the hierarchical formation of intermediate mass black holes in globular clusters. During his master’s degree he developed an interest in accretion phenomena through X-ray observations and took part in an exchange program at the University of Groningen where he worked on the variability and phase-lags analysis of X-ray photons in low-mass X-ray binaries. His Ph.D. project focuses on the study of X-ray reverberation and time-lags in AGNs.

Interests

X-ray, AGN, high energy astrophysics, accretion processes, time and phase lags.

Email
Office
232 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4239
Affiliation
Name
Nicolo
Supervisor
Papadakis
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Female
Off
Starting Month
9

Ingale

PrathameshIngale
Education

Prathamesh Ingale completed his Bachelor's in Physics in 2022 from Fergusson college, Pune, India. He then joined the Masters program in Astrophysics at the University of Bonn. He graduated in 2025 by completing his thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) on Jet precession and variability in M81* under the supervision of Prof. Eduardo Ros and Dr. Sebastiano von Fellenberg. As of September 2025 he is a Ph.D. student in the Physics Department of the University of Crete under the supervision of Prof. I. Papadakis.

Career

During his Bachelor studies, he worked on dispersion measure time series of the pulsars J0613–0200 and J1643–1224, under Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) collaboration. For his MSc thesis, he studied jet precession and variability in M81 using multi-epoch VLBA and EVN observations and led a radio flares monitoring campaign with the Effelsberg 100 m telescope. For his Ph.D. studies, he is working on energy-dependent power spectral densities (PSDs) of Active Galactic Nuclei.

Interests

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), Accretion Dynamics, Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) 

Email
Office
232 Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4239
Affiliation
Name
Prathamesh
Supervisor
Papadakis
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Female
Off
Starting Month
9

Florio

Ericka Florio
Education

Ericka Florio obtained her BSc from Kenyon College in the United States, with in a major physics and minors in mathematics and Spanish. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a visiting student at the University of Crete and IA-FORTH during the fall semester of 2025-2026 under the GAPSTI program. 

Career

During her undergraduate studies, she worked on modeling nonlinear phase transitions in the Early Dark Energy field. For her PhD, she is workin on characterising the effect of tensor fluctuations on CMB spectra and bispectra for a wide range of nonlinear inflationary scenarios. In Crete, she is exploring the statistics of cosmic structure formation with applications on turnaround-scale cosmology. She is a recipient of an Isaac Newton studentship at Cambridge, and was awarded both a Barry Goldwater scholarship and a Clare Boothe Luce scholarship during her undergraduate career, for her work in numerical cosmology.

Interests

Theoretical Physics and Cosmology 

Email
Office
105β Physics Building
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4169
Affiliation
Name
Ericka
Supervisor
Pavlidou
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Ending Year
2026
Female
On

Mueller

Johanna Mueller
Education

Johanna Müller obtained her BSc in Physics from the University of Potsdam (Germany) in 2023 and her MSc in Physics from the University of Southern Denmark in 2025.

Career

In her bachelor’s thesis she focused on diffusive shock acceleration in supernova remnants and in her master’s thesis “Investigating the multi-TeV emission of GRB 221009A” she investigated proton-induced cascade emissions in GRBs. In 2025, she joined the University of Crete and the Institute of Astrophysics (IA-FORTH) as a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Vasiliki Pavlidou.

Interests

High Energy Astrophysics, Astroparticle physics, Multi-messenger astrophysics, Active Galactic Nuclei

Email
Office
105β Physics Building
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4169
Affiliation
Name
Johanna
Supervisor
Pavlidou
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2025
Female
On
Starting Month
7

Weber

Person default image
Office
230β Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4265
Affiliation
Host
Zezas
Name
Phlipp
Visit Duration
-
University/Institute
Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Germany
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Female
Off

Langis

Langis
Education

Dimitrios Alkinoos Langis graduated from the 9th Lyceum of Athens in 2018. In September of the same year, he started his undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics of the University of Crete. He graduated in 2023 and joined the postgraduate program "Advanced Physics" at the University of Crete. In 2024 he completed his MSc degree  and joined the PhD program of the Department of Physics and the Institute of Astrophysics, under the supervision of Dr. Ioannis Liodakis.

Career

In February of 2023, he started working on his senior thesis under the supervision of Prof. Iossif Papadakis, entitled "UV and optical cross correlation studies of AGN at different time-scales". The objective of his thesis was to quantitatively study the long timescale variations in Active Galactic Nuclei. His MSc degree was also under the supervision of Prof. Papadakis and it was entitled Study of the optical/UV time lags in quasars.

Interests

Active Galactic Nuclei, Cosmology, Extragalactic Astrophysics, Theoretical Astrophysics

Email
Office
106β Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4168
Affiliation
Name
Dimitrios Alkinoos
Supervisor
Liodakis
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2024
Female
Off
Starting Month
10

Capecchiacci

SaraCapecchiacci
Education

Sara Capecchiacci obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the Università degli Studi di Milano Statale in 2021, and her Master’s degree in Astrophysics and Space Physics at Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca in 2023. She is currently a PhD student at IA-FORTH, with supervisor Ioannis Liodakis.

Career

Both her MS and BS thesis (respectively entitled “Mitigating unbalanced training sets for machine learning: generation of synthetic SEDs for the selection of high-redshift quasar” and “Study of time dependence of Planck-LFI detector properties”) were carried out in collaboration with INAF. Her PhD project will be focused on polarisation of blazar emission, with observations carried out at the Skinakas Observatory.

Interests

AGNs, Quasars, Blazars, Polarimetry, Astronomical Instrumentation.

Email
Office
106β Physics Bldg
Telephone
(+30) 2810 39-4168
Affiliation
Name
Sara
Supervisor
Liodakis
Past Member
Off
Student Category
Director
Off
Starting Year
2024
Female
On
Starting Month
10