Gravanis Achilleas

Achilleas Gravanis is Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School of the University of Crete and Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology-FORTH. He served as member of the Biomedical Research Program Committee of the European Commission, as member of the Hellenic Council of the Higher Education Quality Assurance Authority (ADIP) and President of the Sectional Committee of Life Sciences Hellenic National Research & Technology Council. He was also member of the Scientific Council of the Hellenic Research & Innovation Foundation (ELIDEK), responsible for Life Sciences; Affiliated Research Professor at the Center for Drug Development, Northeastern University, Boston; Co-founder of biotechnology spinoff companies Bionature and ReNeuroCell; Chair of International Scientific Advisory Board, Athens LifeTech Park; Venture partner at BigPi Ventures. His research group is developing synthetic compounds, agonists of neurotrophin receptors, with neuroprotective and neurogenic properties and potential applications in therapeutics of neurodegenerative diseases. Additionally, his group is focusing on 3D microscaffold bioengineering and neural stem cell technologies to develop neuroimplants for spinal cord injury and brain trauma and neurobiosensors for drug discovery. He published 160 papers, cited on PubMed.