Charmandaris Vassilis

Vassilis Charmandaris obtained his BSc in Physics from the Univ. of Thessaloniki (1989) and his PhD in Astrophysics from Iowa State University, USA (1995). After postdoctoral fellowships in France at CEA/Saclay, (1996-1997) and the Observatoire de Paris (1997- 1999), he moved back to the US at Cornell University where he worked on the development of the Infrared Spectrograph of the Spitzer Space Telescope. In 2005, he joined the faculty of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete and since 2014 is a Professor of Observational Astrophysics. Since March 2025 he is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of FORTH. 

He has served as the Director of the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens (2013-2018) as well as the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH and Skinakas Observatory (2019-2025). He was the President of Hellenic Astronomical Society (2020-2024). He has also served in various international committees related to evaluation of projects, institutes and facilities in Europe, and the USA. These include the Astronomy Working Group (2019-2021) and the Space Science Advisory Committee (2025-present) of ESA, the “Haut Comité Scientifique” of the Observatoire de Paris, France (2015–2020), the Scientific Council of INSU/CNRS France (2019– 2023), the Scientific Council of IRFU/CEA France (2023–present). He was awarded the Public Service Award by the University of Crete (2023) and the title of “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques” by the French Republic (2024).

His research interests are related to problems of galaxy evolution and in particular on star formation and gas accretion in galactic nuclei using mostly data from space telescopes. He has coauthored 258 papers published in refereed journals which have received ~26,500 citations, h-index=78 (source Google Scholar).