Stelios Couris graduated in 1976 from Ionidios Model School of Piraeus, received his degree in Physics from the Department of Physics, University of Athens (UOA) in 1980 and his PhD from Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse (France) in 1984, as a fellow of the French Government. After completing his 2-year military service, he continued postdoctoral studies at the University of Toulouse, as a fellow of European Union and, then, worked at the Central Research Laboratories of GTE Sylvania (now Osram Sylvania) in Boston (USA), as a NATO fellow. Subsequently, he served as Visiting Professor at the Physics Department, University of Crete and as researcher at the Institute of Electronic Structure & Laser (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), at Heraklion, Crete, where he was appointed as Assistant Researcher in 1993 and Principal Researcher in 1997. In 2000 he was appointed Associate Professor at the Physics Department, University of Patras and, in 2004, Full Professor of Physics and Laser Applications. Since 2000 he is a collaborating faculty member with the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences (ICE-HT) of FORTH at Patras.

The research activities of S. Couris and his team concern:

1. - studies of the physics, the generation mechanisms and the dynamics/temporal evolution of the nonlinear optical response and the nonlinear optical properties of advanced photonic materials, such as: fullerenes & derivatives, nanoparticles, photonic polymers, hybrid & organic materials; PAH, 2D materials, graphenes, functionalized graphene & derivatives, silicenes, etc.) in time scales from few milliseconds (10-3 s) to a few femtoseconds (10-15 s).

2. - laser spectroscopy (atomic and molecular multiphoton ionization spectroscopy, time-of-flight-laser ionization spectroscopy, coherent Raman spectroscopy, laser induced fluorescence, etc.)

3. - plasma physics and diagnostics, physics of electrical discharges 

4. - laser induced plasmas and their analytical applications for environmental issues, metallurgy, combustion diagnostics, surface treatment of materials, etc.

5. - the development of new laser-based techniques for the control of the authenticity and adulteration of food (, e.g., olive oil, honey, milk) assisted by advanced machine learning techniques.

His research work includes more than 190 original research papers in internationally recognized journals and has gained significant international recognition having received more than 5000 citations, with an h-index of 38. He has coordinated/participated in many European and national competitive projects and has developed many international collaborations with foreign universities and research centers. More information is available on the website of the NLOLA Lab (Non-Linear Optics and Laser Applications Laboratory) : http://nam.wpnet.upatras.gr/