Professor

She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Cosmological Physics of the University of Chicago (2005-2008) and an Einstein fellow at Caltech (2008-2011). During the 2011-2012 year she was a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. She was elected as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics in 2010 and she joined the Department in the fall of 2012. In 2014 she was the recipient of the “L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for women in science”. She was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2018 and to a Professor in 2023. Between 2021 and 2026 she was the Deputy Director of the Institute of Astrophysics, FORTH. Since 2023 she has been serving as Associate Editor in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. In 2024 she was awarded an ERC Synergy grant entitled "MW-Atlas" to create the first three-dimensional, comprehensive atlas of our Milky Way galaxy. As of 2025 she is the Director of Skinakas Observatory and as of 2026 Director of IA.

He was a research fellow at the Physics Department of the University of Southampton between 1993 - 1994 and 1997. He then moved to University of Crete, where he worked as a research associate until 2001, when he accepted a position of researcher at IESL FORTH. In 2003 he commenced his appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Crete, he was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2009 and to a Professor in 2014. He served as the Chairman of the Department of Physics and from November 2015 until August 2019. He has also served as Director of the Skinakas Observatory between the retirement of Ioannis Papamastorakis and the foundation of IA-FORTH. Since June of 2026 he is serving as IA Deputy Director. 

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 March 1, 2025 he is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of FORTH.