Astrophysicist National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Dr. Kosmas Gazeas was born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied Physics at the Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and he got his MSc and PhD degree in Observational Astrophysics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UOA).

His post-doctoral research in astrophysics was conducted at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), USA, where he worked with images taken from Hubble Space Telescope (NASA). He worked at the European Space Agency – ESA, Netherlands where he specialized in space technology and optics. Since 2012 he act as an ESA scientific consultant in projects related to space optics.

In parallel to his research activity, his passion about space exploration led him to participate at the Astronaut Selection Process at ESA in 2008. He managed to be shortlisted among the top 500 candidates in the world.

Today Dr. Gazeas is a Lecturer of Observational Astrophysics at Physics Department (UOA). His educational and research work is focused in astronomical study of eclipsing binary stars, supernovae, blazars, black holes and other exotic objects in our Universe, while we works in parallel with asteroseismology, on various space technology topics, applied optics and astronomical instrumentation.

His rich research work is reflected on a large number of research and academic assignments on various astronomical subjects, while his interest in public outreach led him to get involved with science communication. During the past years he gave numerous talks in schools, universities and other institutes, while he is an active organizing member in Athens Science Festival.