Costas A. Thanos
Faculty of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Costas A. Thanos was born, raised and educated in Athens. He holds a BSc (1974) and a PhD (1980) from the Faculty of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where he has been working for more than 35 years, currently as professor of Plant Physiology. He has served as Chair of the Faculty and he is now the Director of the Department of Botany. His doctoral dissertation dealt with watermelon seed germination and since then – apart from his teaching and administrational duties – he has been an active researcher focused on seed physiology and ecology, postfire regeneration of Mediterranean plants, Theophrastus and the history of Plant Science as well as seed banking and in situ plant conservation. Most of his publications can be accessed in https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Costas_Thanos. He has travelled extensively all over the world, taking part in numerous international conferences or project meetings and giving several invited keynote lectures. He is an associate editor of the CUP journal Seed Science Research and he has recently stepped down after serving for 6 years as President of the Hellenic Botanical Society (HBS). He has been involved in many Mediterranean and European research projects, such as CRETAPLANT (plant microreserves in Crete), the NKUA Seedbank and the networks ENSCONET and GENMEDOC/SEMCLIMED (focused on collecting, handling and storing native seeds). He has contributed to the organization of several national and international conferences, among them Tree Seeds and MEDPINE 2 (Crete 2002), the inaugural Seed Ecology I (Rhodes 2004) and the HBS Biannual Conferences of 2009 (Athens) and 2017 (Crete).
