Nektarios Tavernarakis is the only person in Greece that has been funded twice this year by the European Research Council (ERC) and now the new chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH), director of the central management of FORTH and researcher.
Nektarios Tavernarakis is also the Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of FORTH and also Professor at the Medical School of the University of Crete.
Additionally,he is also one of only 45 scientists from all over Europe who have recently ensured funding from the European Council’s highly acclaimed Proof of Concept Grant program.
Grants for the Innovation Promotion of the European Research Council are specifically targeted at researchers who have already been funded and support the final stage of exploiting the research results for the development of innovative products and services.
The aims of the new research program that was funded by the ERC regard the development of effective interventions so as to tackle serious neuro degenerative diseases.
At the same time. he was elected member of the Scientific Council of the European Council of Research (ERC Scientific Council Member). The new members of the Scientific Council (SS) are elected by an independent 6-member panel of distinguished scientists designated by the European Committee. The SS is the supreme governing body of the European Research Council (ERC) and it currently consists of 22 distinguished scientists and academics, whose main duty is to develop a strategy and select evaluators for proposals submitted for funding by the ERC. ERC, which was founded in 2007, is the first Organization to fund innovative research in Europe. Till today, it has funded around 6,500 researchers. For the years 2014-2020 it manages funds of 13 billion euros.
Curriculum Vitae
Nektarios Tavernarakis is the new chairman of the Board of Directors of FORTH, director of the central management of FORTH and Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology, He is also a regular professor at the Medical School of the University of Crete. He is also the Director of the Postgraduate Studies Program in Bioinformatics at the Medical School of the University of Crete and also head of the Neurogenetics and Aging Laboratory of IMBB. He studied Biology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, holds a Ph.D. of the Department of Biology of the University of Crete and has worked out postdoctoral studies in the United States. His research interests focus on the study of the molecular mechanisms governing the function and pathophysiology of the nervous system. He has significantly contributed to the understanding the mechanisms of neurodegeneration, memory and learning, as well as aging.
He has also contributed to the development of innovative experimental tools and methods for the study of the nervous system and cell biology. He has published dozens of scientific papers in reputable international scientific journals and books, as well as many popular scientific articles in Greek and international publications. He is an elected member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council, the European Organization for Molecular Biology and the European Academy of Sciences. Regarding his entire scientific contribution, he has been awarded with important international and national distinctions, among which the funding from the Innovation Promotion Program and two Grants for Respected Researchers of the ERC. Indeed, he is among the first in Europe to have received two grants from this highly competitive program, the only one so far in Greece. He has also been awarded with the Bodossakis Academic Prize in Medicine and Biology in the field of Biomedical Sciences, with the Research Prize by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, with the Scientific Prize of the Embirikos Foundation, with the Aretaieio Prize for the Biomedical Sciences of the Academy of Athens and The New Research Prize of the European Organization for Molecular Biology.