Georgios Archontis

Biography

Current position: Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Cyprus.Personal: Born: 22 September 1965, Athens, Greece. Family status: Married, 2 children. Education Harvard University, USA. Ph.D in Theoretical Biophysics (1994). “Statistical Mechanical Studies of Proteins”; Research supervisor: Martin Karplus.University of Athens, Greece. B.S. in Physics (1987); GPA 9.41 September 1994 – September 1996: Post-doctoral researcher, Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (Research advisor: M. Karplus). Employment History 1. University of Cyprus, 2006-today. Associate Professor, Department of Physics.2. University of Cyprus, 2002-2006. Assistant Professor, Department of Physics.3. Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France, January 2005 – November 2005. Visiting Professor (Sabbatical leave).4. University of Cyprus, 2001-2002. Lecturer, Department of Physics.5. University of Cyprus, August 1996-2001. Lecturer, Department of Natural Sciences.6. University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, June 1994 – August 1996. Post-doctoral associate.7. Harvard University, USA, August 1988 – June 1994. Research and Teaching Assistant, Committee on Higher Degrees in Biophysics. Other Affiliations 1. Graduate Program “Masters in Bioinformatics”, Department of Biology, University of Athens. In the period 2004-2006, I have been giving a series of lectures and computational exercises, based on the Molecular Dynamics program CHARMM. I have also supervised the Masters thesis of Dr. Spyrou (January 2006), in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the program.

Research Interest

Our research aims to understand the properties of biomolecular systems by means of theoretical concepts, (based on statistical mechanics, continuum electrostatics, classical and quantum physics) and computational methodologies (molecular dynamics simulations with atomic-detail models, implicit-solvent models, electronic structure calculations). Some of our work is conducted in collaboration with groups at the Department of Chemistry (UC), as well as international groups in the US, France and Greece. Our research is currently funded by grants from the University of Cyprus, as well as the Cyprus Promotion Foundation. We are equipped with several Linux clusters and specialized biomolecular software (CHARMM, UHBD, MEAD, BOSS, Gaussian03).