I am a young (still) and passionate scientist, loving everything related to nature, science and travelling. I was born in Rafina, a small city nearby Athens, the capital of Greece. My early life was filled with sunny beaches and golden fields, where I spent most of my time, exploring everything living or dead. My curious nature was other peoples’ trouble (because I asked too much) but to me, it was my passport to a world I adore, the world of science.

#My scientific career in a nutshell

After finishing high-school, in 2005, I moved on to study Physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and I already had the determination to become a Space Scientist. During the last two years of my bachelor studies I went on to specialise on Astronomy and Astrophysics and I met my first mentor, Prof. Helen Mavromichalaki head of the Athens Neutron Monitor station. Under her supervision I wrote my bachelor thesis, which focused on studying the relation between CMEs, Solar Flares and SPEs, and to further understand the sources of solar energetic particles as well as the long term behaviour of CMEs, via observational analysis.

Following, in 2012 I moved to UK and the city of London, to join the Astronomy and Astrophysics Master program at Queen Mary, University of London. There under the supervision of Prof. David Burgess I dived into studying the acceleration of ions at a shock environment similar to the Earth’s quasi-parallel bow shock. After completing my MSc, I was honoured with the “Principal’s Prize for outstanding academic achievement”.

With all that, and a lot of passion in my pocket, in 2014 I settled just a few hours’ drive from the polar circle, to a “small” city called Oulu. There, under the supervision of Prof. Ilya Usoskin, head of the Oulu neutron monitor station, I completed my PhD which covered quite a selection of topics surrounding the field of Cosmic Rays, such as the heliospheric modulation of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs), inferring the solar variability in the past through its impact on GCRs and subsequently their by-product the cosmogenic radionuclides, studying extreme particle events identified in the radiocarbon stored in tree rings, and analysing Ground Level Enhancements.

In pursuing my goals I ended up in the mid-2017 in Helsinki as a postdoctoral researcher in the Space Physics research group lead by Prof. Emilia Kilpua. Now I am working in the propagation and evolution of CMEs and CME-driven shocks through the interplanetary space using data driven MHD model EUHFORIA.

In 2018 I was awarded a postdoc grant from the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters via the PostdocPool Grand scheme. This grant took me to Austria, and more  precisely to the University of Graz for one academic year. During my time there I dived into the solar coronal modelling and how our models capture or fail to capture what observations indicate!