Prof. Ioannis Kourakis is a theoretical physicist by training and an applied mathematician by vocation. Prior to his appointment at Khalifa University, he has held academic posts at Queen’s University Belfast (UK) and at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (UAE), in addition to research posts at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) and at Ghent University (Belgium). He was awarded a Special Visiting Researcher status (PVE, 3-year term) at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and a joint Newton (UK)-FAPESP (Brazil) Fellowship at UNESP (State University of Sao Paulo), Brazil. He sustains research links with the Hellenic Space Center (Greece), the Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (Mumbai) and the South-African Space Agency (SANSA), among other active collaborations. He has been a regular research visitor to Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), University of Kwazulu Natal (Durban), University of Sydney (Australia), among others.
Dr. Kourakis has extensive experience in research funding and project management, both in the UAE and earlier. Among other roles, he earlier served as principal coordinator of an EU-funded network linking 5 universities in EU and Brazil. He has also served as evaluation board member at the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), as Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports (Springer Nature), as Associate Editor for Plasma journal (MDPI, Switzerland) and as postdoctoral examination panel member for >25 PGR/PhD exams in 12 institutions from various countries. He sustains active links with research groups in Europe (UK, Greece, Germany, Belgium), in S. Africa (Durban, Cape Town), in the USA, in Pakistan, in India, and elsewhere.
