Alexander serves the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UoWM as the Director of both the Laboratory of Biomaterials and Computational Mechanics and the M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering. He is co-founder of PLiN Nanotechnology S.A., which received Venture Capital funding during his tenure as the company’s CEO and President. He also serves as an External Reviewer of the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning group-specific guidelines for manufactured nanomaterials and is the President of the Hellenic Society of Biomechanics (since 2018), to the board of which he was firstly elected in 2013. Having been granted multiple awards and scholarships for his research, he is ceaselessly involved in high added value projects and global networking activities. Alexander serves the Editorial Board of various citation-indexed journals and has published more than 60 journal papers. His strong ties to the industry have led to his appointment to the Board of Directors of several private and public companies as well as scientific societies.

As a Fulbright Scholar, he will be hosted at Boston University (BU), Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, where he will conduct research focusing on cell biomechanics. This is an aspect which is systematically neglected when it comes to developing biomaterials for bone regeneration, despite being widely accepted that nearly every biological process is modulated by how a cell’s mechanical environment is decoded intracellularly. The collaboration with BU aims to provide refined insight to the mechanotransduction of extrinsic cellular loads through a combination of advanced multiscale modelling techniques and biological assays. The ultimate goal of this grant is to establish a continuing collaboration between the host and home institutions of the Fulbright Scholar.

Foivos Alexandros Mouchlianitis is a biologist, currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Biology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a Master’s Degree in the field of Hydrobiology and Aquacultures and in 2020 he completed his Ph.D. studies in fish reproductive biology and ecology, during which he was awarded a scholarship provided by The Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation & The General Secretariat for Research and Technology. His research interests include fish ecology, physiology, local adaptation and evolutionary processes. He has been involved in multiple national and international research programs, has completed two Erasmus internship programs, and has been trained in several European and American Institutes/Universities.

As a Fulbright Fellow, he will spend 3 months at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Connecticut and Conte Anadromous Fish Research Center, prominent Institutions in the fields of fish physiology and ecology. His research will focus on aspects of fish renal anatomy and osmoregulation functions and their level of adaptability. The main objective of his Fulbright project is to unveil the osmoregulatory mechanisms and renal morphometrics in wild fish populations adapted to divergent salinity conditions. Such information will help understanding how stenohaline fishes will cope in the light of climate change-induced salinization of freshwater systems. During his visit, he expects to acquire new skills and in-depth knowledge on fish physiology and evolution. He also looks forward to challenge himself to move beyond the boundaries of his life by joining a multinational environment and becoming an active component of a brilliant scientific community of diverse people, cultures, and ideas. After all, in the words of Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living”.

Anthi-Danae Spathoni has studied literature and art history in Greece and France. She has received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Rennes II (La question du paysage abstrait dans la peinture contemporaine : Cy Twombly et Gerhard Richter, 2018). Her doctoral research focused on landscape painting, image-text relationship, contemporary painting and photography. Her texts can be found in exhibition catalogs and international journals, while her first book TWOMBLY 'a selection of essays', was published in 2019 with the support of the Cy Twombly Foundation and Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio. Her second book, based on her Ph.D. research on Cy Twombly, is under preparation and will be published during 2023. After working as a curatorial researcher at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the supervision of Professor Kostas Ioannidis. Her study explores antiquity’s reception in the work of Cy Twombly and Yannis Kounellis, aiming to investigate how antiquity is treated in their work. This reveals the ambition to create a theoretical framework which would use Twombly and Kounellis as a starting point and could develop a reflection that could extend to their generation of artists.

As a Fulbright Scholar and visiting researcher to Princeton University, Anthi-Danae will be able to expand her research in the United States conducting primary, secondary and in situ research while working under the supervision of Professor Brooke Holmes.

Emmanuella Doussis is a full time Professor of International Institutions at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens where she lectures among others on international law and international institutions, and on climate diplomacy. She has studied at the University of Athens and at the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (DEA de droit international public et organisations internationales et DEA en droit de l’environnement). She has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bourgogne, Grenoble-Alpes and Aix-Marseille, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Geneva and European University Institute. She is currently the Director of the Institute of European Integration and Policy and holds a UNESCO chair on climate diplomacy. She is a member of the IUCN World Environmental Law Committee, the ILA Committee on the role of international law in sustainable management of natural resources, the Greek National Committee for Adaptation to Climate Change and senior policy advisor of the Greek think tank ELIAMEP. In 2021, she was awarded the CISDL Natural Resources International Legal Specialist Award. She has published nine books and numerous articles in peer-review journals. Her most recent book explores the role of international law in effectively managing climate change. Her research interests include sustainable development law and policies, international and European environmental law and policies, climate diplomacy, including the EU climate diplomacy, climate adaptation policies, settlement of disputes. She speaks Greek, English, French and Italian.

Dr. Evangelos Efthymiou is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Metal Structures at the Department of Civil Engineering of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where since January 2012 he is assigned with teaching and organizational responsibilities related to courses on analysis and design of steel and aluminium buildings and structures. His research objectives focus on structural and sustainability assessment of metal-based applications in construction accounting for cost-effectiveness, eco-efficiency and resilience. He has been acting as reviewer in international scientific journals and conferences, while he has been an evaluator of research projects submitted within European funding framework. In view of standardization, Dr Efthymiou is member of European and National Technical Committees, TC250/SC9-PT1 and ELOT/TC67 respectively, contributing to the development of the forthcoming second generation of Eurocode 9: Design of Aluminium Structures and Eurocode 3: Design of Steel Structures.

As a 2022-2023 Fulbright Scholar, Dr Efthymiou will be hosted by the UCLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, where he intends to study advanced performance-based engineering approaches employed in the U.S. for the seismic design of steel structures and work to improve design parameters describing critical limit states in current AISC steel seismic provisions. This work has application to designing steel structures to resist seismic demands in both the U.S. and Greece. Moreover, Dr Efthymiou will be introduced to earthquake resistant systems utilized in current U.S. practice, which will help transfer appropriate schemes and design approaches to an earthquake prone country such as Greece. In parallel and with respect to the exchange of knowledge to the UCLA Department of Civil Engineering, the project will include teaching activities providing lectures on Structural Aluminum Design and Eurocode 9, disseminating respective scientific developments and standardization provisions.

Nina (Ioanna) Topintzi is Associate Professor in Phonology at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She holds a B.A. in Greek Philology from the University of Crete, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from University College London. She has taught in Greece and abroad (UCL, AUTh, University of Patras, TEI of Patras, University of the Aegean, University of Leipzig). In 2011 she was a visiting scholar at MIT and then a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Leipzig (2011-2012). Nina teaches in the areas of phonology, phonetics and typology and conducts research in phonology and phonological typology (syllable structure, stress, geminates, poetic meter, segmental phonology), as well as the phonetics-phonology and the phonology-morphology interfaces. Her publications include the books Onsets: Suprasegmental and Prosodic Behaviour (2010, Cambridge University Press), Τυπολογία Γλωσσών. Βασικές αρχές, θεωρητικές προσεγγίσεις και φαινόμενα (2021, Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης) and several articles in international journals (Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Phonology, Glossa, Journal of Greek Linguistics), and edited volumes. She has also participated in various research projects in Greece and abroad (Brazil, Germany).

As a 2023 Fulbright Scholar, Nina will be hosted at the California State University Fresno (Fresno) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), to conduct research on Greek poetic rhyme from a phonological perspective, an area that remains considerably understudied. She will look into different patterns of rhyme, such as imperfect and rich, and will explore the factors that underlie their distribution.

Dr. Maria Sakka works at the University of Thessaly, at the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Thessaly, School of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Agriculture Crop Production and Rural Environment. Dr. Sakka has received scholarships and awards from different organizations such as the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) and Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.). She has worked in different research projects funded by the EU and national sources, and published 20 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Her research interests focus on insect behavior, insecticide resistance, chemical and non-chemical control of stored product insects.

Her visit to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Parlier, CA, will expand her research by conducting innovative experiments with certain quarantine and pre-shipment treatments of fresh fruits against different insects using novel technologies. It is expected that this specific collaboration will strengthen and standardize the phytosanitary procedures in both the U.S. and the EU, creating robust protocols for key application scenarios and food security.

Nicolas Papanastasopoulos is an Assistant Professor of International Politics with emphasis on crisis management in the Department of Political Science at Democritus University of Thrace. He studied Political Philosophy – Science, Public Law and Administration, International and European Studies and Political History. He completed his studies with a doctorate in Crisis Management in Foreign Policy (University of Athens, 2011). He has taught at the University of Thessaly, the Hellenic National Defence College, the University of Athens and at Panteion University. He is also a State Department Alumnus (2019) specializing in U.S. foreign policy.

As a Fulbright Scholar, he will be hosted at University of Delaware (UD), Department of Political Science & International Relations, Newark, Delaware, where he will conduct his research focusing on security studies and U.S. Grand Strategy (U.S. Grand Strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Biden Era). In this context, his research proposes to explore the potential of approaches to work together theoretically and empirically through a research design. The methodological framework of the research proposed takes all the contemporary recommendations into account. Firstly, a theoretical approach of International Relations (IR), Foreign Policy Analysis and Strategy theory and literature will be conducted. Secondly, analytical and institutional framework permits the easy exploitation of existing and rich data from diverse sources and the projection of our analytical model. Then interviews, including political, diplomatic and military staff will be conducted (particularly Alexander George’s ‘operational code’ remains a unique methodological tool in this approach. And it is crucial to see and examine presidential operational code). The reason for this approach is that this proposal will try to examine all the elements affecting Grand Strategy and crisis management: a) The new World Order, b) U.S. National Security Goals, c) Greek-Turkish dispute, d) International Law. His research proposal paves the ground for understanding and trust between U.S. and Greece and boosts healthy growth of bilateral relations.

Vaitsa Giannouli is a postdoctoral researcher in Neuroscience, School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and serves as adjunct lecturer at the University of Western Macedonia, Department of Psychology. Her research interests are focused on, but not limited to neuropsychology, geropsychology, biopsychology, and cognitive psychology. She received a B.S. and M.S. in Psychology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and a M.S. in Health Care Management from Hellenic Open University. Prior to her current position she was a postdoctoral researcher at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Neurobiology.

Vaitsa will visit the Institute of Gerontology & Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute at Wayne State University as well as Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Detroit, Michigan for the spring semester of 2022-2023. There, she will work on the development of neuropsychological tools for the detection and prevention of financial exploitation in older adults.