Biography

He is currently a Professor Emeritus at Thessaly University (Greece), a visiting Prof at Wolverhampton University (UK) and chairman at the National Centre “Exercise is Medicine-Greece”. He also is - or has been - a national rowin g coach for Greece and UK, an elite dancer and dance teacher, a visiting/guest lecturer at the London Contemporary Dance School and the English National Ballet School, external examiner in several European Universities, and author of the World’s first university-based MSc courses in “Dance Science” (Wolverhampton University, UK, 2002) and in “Military Fitness and Wellbeing” (Thessaly University, Greece, 2013). In addition, he has primarily been involved in the setting up the first Greek university-based MSc in “Exercise and Health” (Thessaly University, 2005). His research focuses on physical fitness and health and – inter alia – he has led research into athletes' & dancers' fitness and welfare commissioned by the British Olympic Association & Dance UK, respectively. He also works on elements of health and quality of life in different populations, including passive smokers, obese individuals, and rheumatoid arthritis patients. Parts of this work has been adopted by reputable agencies, such as the European Commission, Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General (2009), the WHO Collaborating Centre for Housing and Health (2010), the Scottish NHS (2011), the British Heart Foundation (2012), the South African Thoracic Society (2013), the US Surgeon’s General Report (2014), US Department of Health & Human Services (2015), the European League Against Rheumatism (2016), the UK Society for the Study of Addiction (2017), the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation (2018), the European Respiratory Society (2018) and the American Heart Association (2023). Parts of his work have also been used by Wikipedia to describe terms such as ‘euphoria’, ‘overtraining’, ‘passive smoking’ and ‘physical exercise’, while his name appeared at the top 2% of all academics and researchers worldwide (2020, 2021, 2022).