Prof. Costas N. Papanicolas is the President of the Cyprus Institute and the CEO of the Cyprus Research and Educational Foundation, Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens Greece and Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA.   He is advisor to the President of the Republic of Cyprus on climate change and Presidential Special Envoy for Climate Change.

He holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He has served as researcher at CEA  (Saclay, France) and as Full Professor at the University of Illinois (U-C) and at the University of Athens (Greece).  He directed the Institute of Accelerating Systems and Applications of Greece of the National Technical University of Athens and the University of Athens and the Physics Laboratory of the University of Athens.  He chaired the Accreditation Council for Tertiary Education of the Republic of Cyprus (1998 -2006) and the Committee that established the Departments of Physical Sciences at the University of Cyprus.  He served on the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology of the Hellenic Republic and on the Research and Innovation Council of the Republic of Cyprus.

He has researched and published extensively in the area of Nuclear, Particle and Medical physics, in Energy Policy and Solar Energy and in Educational Policy.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, member of the European Academy of Sciences (Academia Europea), member of the Silk Road Academy of Sciences (China) and Founding member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and the Arts.

He was been awarded the “Medal of Excellence for Service to the Republic” by the Republic of Cyprus for his contributions to research and education to the Republic of Cyprus and ordained as “Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia” by the President of Italy.