Local Organizing Committee
Ecocity Member, Research & Teaching Associate, Dept. of Chemistry, Medical School, NKUA
Konstantina Dimakopoulou
PhD, researcher, Medical School, NKUA
Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School Athens, Greece and Imperial College London, School of Public Health, Environmental Research Group, United Kingdom. Prof Katsouyanni is working in Environmental Epidemiology and is an old and committed member of ISEE. Her research focuses on the health effects of environmental stressors, mainly outdoor air pollution. She has coordinated the EU APHEA network which provided European wide results on the short-term effects of air pollution and participated in numerous projects investigating exposure to air pollution, gene-environment interactions, air pollution effects in sensitive sub-populations, health impact assessment. Prof Katsouyanni has previously organized the successful ISEE 1999 Annual Meeting in Athens, Greece, and has been a counselor of ISEE. She received the ISEE Goldsmith Award in 2006. She has organized various international meetings and workshops and has been a member of many organizational and scientific committees in scientific conferences. She has been a member of numerous WHO Committees and a Panel member of the European Research Council. Her scientific activity is reflected in over 200 scientific publications.
Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School. As. Prof Samoli’s research interests focus on the health effects of air pollution (mortality, morbidity and other health indices) and in Biostatistics, particularly in developing statistical methodology for the analysis of time-series and longitudinal data. She has participated as co-investigator in several funded epidemiological research programs since 1995 and in various scientific and organizational committees, while she has organized short-courses and international workshops. She is an active member of ISEE since 1998 and has been an associated non-elect member of ISEE European chapter since 2016, and a member of the scientific and the awards committees of ISEE Young Researchers conference in 2018. She has acted as an invited expert for WHO/EC and a reviewer for WHO, HEI and Research council in Hong King, while she participates in the Editorial Board of Environmental Epidemiology.
Member of the HEI Research Committee
Antonis Analitis is a researcher in the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His main research interests focus on Biostatistics and Environmental Epidemiology and specifically on statistical methods for the analysis of epidemiological time series and the assessment of the effects and synergy of air pollution and temperature on health. He has participated as investigator in several research programmes funded by the EC. He is the author and co-author of more than 40 articles in English language peer-reviewed journals with more than 6000 citations.
Dr. Vassiliki Benetou is Professor of Hygiene and Epidemiology at the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, of the School of Medicine at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece.
She is a registered Pediatrician. She earned a Master of Science Degree in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health and completed her PhD in Epidemiology at Athens Medical School. She has actively participated in many multi-centered European research projects, as well as, in national research projects in the sector of public health and epidemiology. She is Deputy Director of the Postgraduate program «Epidemiology – Research Methodology in Biomedical sciences, clinical practice and public health» run in the Dept. of Hygiene,
Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, at Athens Medical School. Her research interests are focused on chronic disease epidemiology, nutritional epidemiology, as well as, public health nutrition issues across the lifecycle.
Dr. Erasmia A. Bizani (female), holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has worked as a post-doctoral fellow and teaching staff from 2006 to 2011 at the Department of Chemistry at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and from 2011 has assumed a similar position at the Department of Chemistry, University of Athens. Her research interests lie in the fields of environmental and food analysis, water quality and water treatment, photocatalysis, wastewater-based epidemiology. She has participated in several national and European research projects. She co-authors 12 scientific publications and two book chapters, she has presented her work in many national and international conferences and she performs peer-review for several scientific journals. Since 2018 she sits at the board of directors of Ecocity, an Athens based NGO for the urban environmental protection, representing Greek NGOs at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).
Dr Evangelia Diapouli is Assistant Researcher (Researcher C) at the Institute of Nuclear & Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy & Safety, NCSR “Demokritos”. She holds a Chemical Engineering Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens (2000), an MSc in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, USA (2002) and a PhD in Air pollution from the National Technical University of Athens (2008). She has more than 15 years of experience in the study of atmospheric aerosol. Her research activities include the physico-chemical characterisation of ambient and indoor particulate pollution, aerosol source apportionment and population and occupational risk assessment. She has been actively involved in European initiatives for the development of standard methods for aerosol characterisation, including the quantification of carbonaceous species in PM and the adoption of a European harmonised methodology in the application of receptor models for PM source apportionment. She has participated in several European and national projects on urban air quality and related health impact assessment, and is the co-author of 63 articles in peer review journals and more than 100 papers in national and international conferences. Since 2019, she is member of the Management Board of the Hellenic Association for Aerosol Research (HAAR).
Konstantina Dimakopoulou is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece. Dr Dimakopoulou has participated as a biostatistician in several EC-funded programs including, the HYENA project assessing the relations between exposure to environmental noise and the risk of hypertension, the ESCAPE project for investigating the long-term effects on human health of exposure to air pollution in Europe, as well as in projects co-funded by the EC and the Greek government (MAPHEAT, assessing the short-term effects of air pollution on mortality, using spatio-temporal LUR models & RESPOZE, for the investigation of the effects of personal ozone exposure on respiratory outcomes in schoolchildren and by the UK to validate and compare new integrated air pollution exposure assessment methods for estimating simultaneously the health effects of both short and long-term exposure, in London. Currently, she is involved in the EXPANSE research project (H2020) that focuses on the urban exposome and investigates the impact of environmental exposure on human health. She has co-organized 2 workshops on the statistical analysis of epidemiological data. Her main research interests focus on studying the health effects of environmental stressors, mainly outdoor air pollution and noise and developing statistical methodology for exposure assessment. Dr Dimakopoulou has 63 publications in peer-reviewed journals with 5,900 citations (h- index: 30).
Research expertise on Physicochemical aerosol characterization and nuclear analytical techniques for climatic active aerosol species, nano-particle metrology, development of novel sampling and measurement techniques for aerosol particles, exposure of humans to aerosol contaminants such as heavy metals and radioactive pollutants, and retrieval of emission source impact, source apportionment and receptor modelling. PI for Demokritos in several EU FP and DG-ENV programmes, IAEA Regional projects & other National programmes. Established infrastructure, including the Athens GAW/ACTRIS Demokritos station, the Mt. Helmos Free troposphere Aerosol and GHG station and the QA/QC aerosol lab facility (EN 17025 accredited). National Counterpart for Greece in Regional IAEA programmes. He has supervised 12 PhD theses and 14 MSc project theses. He has more than 145 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Invited reviewer and project evaluator (EURAMET European Metrology Research, the Czech & Hungarian Academy of Sciences Grant programmes). Invited IAEA expert missions (3) Africa and Middle East, Member of the National Emergency Action Plan “Xenokratis”. Founding member and president of the Hellenic Association for Aerosol Research.
Professor of Pulmonology, 2nd Pulmonary Medicine Department, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. Prof. Anna Karakatsani holds a Master of Public Health Degree from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and a PhD from the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, School of Medicine, NKUA (ΙΚΥ). Her research (since 1986) focuses on the health effects of air pollution exposure, environmental and occupational lung diseases as well as chronic disease epidemiology. She is an active clinician at “ATTIKON” University Hospital, Haidari, Greece where she has also organized and runs the smoking cessation clinic. Prof Anna Karakatsani has participated in several funded epidemiological research programs and in various scientific and organizational committees.
Maria Iosifina Kasdagli is a Phd student and a Research Associate in the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. She has participated in EU funded projects such as EXTREMA and EXPANSE, and in projects funded by National organizations. Her main research interest is Environmental Epidemiology and Biostatistics with focus on air pollution effects on human health.
Antonis Analitis is a researcher in the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His main research interests focus on Biostatistics and Environmental Epidemiology and specifically on statistical methods for the analysis of epidemiological time series and the assessment of the effects and synergy of air pollution and temperature on health. He has participated as investigator in several research programmes funded by the EC. He is the author and co-author of more than 40 articles in English language peer-reviewed journals with more than 6000 citations.
I am a Lecturer in Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a trained obstetrician and gynecologist, with a focus on the effects of environmental exposures during pregnancy to short and long-term outcomes such as children’s neurodevelopment. My research emphasizes estimating the health effects of in utero exposure to air pollutants in pregnant women and their offspring, using advanced epidemiologic methods to provide accurate information and high-quality evidence that can (i) minimize bias and confounding in environmental and clinical epidemiology research; (ii) incorporate the role of environmental risk factors in the development of clinical guidelines (iii) inform public health policy about regulations and safety thresholds and ultimately; (iv) improve the health of individuals and entire communities.
Jenny Politi is tenured administrative staff at the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics of the NKUA Medical School.
She is the Administrative Officer of the Msc course in Biostatistics, NKUA Medical School, and has been involved in the organization of several short courses, workshops and seminars in pre- and post-graduate studies.
She has also acted as the administrative officer in environmental epidemiology funded research projects.
Sophia Rodopoulou, PhD, is an experienced Biostatistician with a demonstrated history of working in the Environmental Epidemiology research field. From 2012 until today, she has participated in more than nine European and American research studies as associate of Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). Holder of two MSc in Applied Mathematics and Biostatistics, she is a research professional with a PhD focused in Environmental Epidemiology from NKUA. Publications in English peer-reviewed journals: 39; Citations (excluding self-citations): 936 (Scopus); h-index: 15 (September 2021).
Vana Sypsa is Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics in the Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. Her research interests include the epidemiology and mathematical modeling of hepatitis C, HIV, SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases as well as interventions among people who inject drugs and prisoners. She has participated in advisory boards to prepare and implement the national hepatitis C and HIV plans in Greece. She was President of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics in 2019-2020. She is member of the national scientific committee of experts for COVID-19 in Greece.
Giota Touloumi, PhD, is Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics of the Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). She is a member of several scientific societies and she also participates in several scientific committees while she is an active member of 5 European or International groups/networks including the International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT), the Network of Excellence: European network of HIV/AIDS cohort studies to coordinate at European and International level clinical research on HIV/AIDS (EuroCoord). She was the PI of the statistical and data management centre of the Nationwide multicentre cohort study HEPNET.Greece for more than 10 years, while she is the PI of the multicentre cohort study Athens Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (AMACS); the Nationwide Health Examination survey EMENO (National Morbidity and Risk Factors Survey); the Hprolipsis [a Health Examination Survey of hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV in the general and vulnerable populations (migrants and Roma)] and the Design and development of an automatic detection system for epidemic outbreaks and assessment of personalized infection risk of viral hepatitis B and C and HIV infection (Hippocrates Epidemic Detection System). She has participated as the PI of the Greek partner in several research programs funded by the EU, the ECDC or the NIH USA. Her research interests are focused on the development of novel statistical methods; infectious diseases epidemiology focusing mainly on the HIV infection and on viral hepatitis B and C; Public Health, and on environmental epidemiology. She is the author or coauthor of more than 200 scientific papers published in peer review English speaking Journals. Her work is cited more than 25000 times, according to Google Scholar and he has an h-index=78 (Google Scholar, 8/2021).
Sofia Zafeiratou is a Phd student in the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. Her research focuses on Environmental Epidemiology and Biostatistics. From 2017, she has been working as Research Associate in the aforementioned department, participating in several projects such as the EU funded EXTREMA, HBM4EU and EXHAUSTION and projects funded by National and Local organizations. Her main research interests are focused on the effects of the climate change and air pollution on human health.
