Dr. Stavros Pissadakis is a Director of Research at FORTH-IESL. He obtained his Ptichion degree in Physics from the University of Crete, Greece, his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering/Photonics from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton, UK, and he has gained a Specialisation in Business Strategy, from the Harvard Business School, USA. He established and leads the Photonic Materials and Devices Laboratory (PMDL), which strategic vision focuses on the development of disruptive design photonic, sensing and actuating devices, for a number of diverse current and emerging application fields; covering investigations from the proof-of-principle stage and reaching device demonstration in relevant environment (TRL5). He has been employed at various academic positions at Greece and UK, and as a Visiting Professor at the Information Engineering Department, University of Parma, Italy.

He is a member of the Board of Stakeholders of the European Platform Photonics21, while also being active in drawing research policy for Photonics and relevant technology commercialisation aspects. He has been involved into several research projects, personally attracting a total budget greater than 2.5MEuros, while coordinated targeted know-how transfer to a number of industrial partners. Dr Pissadakis has been actively participated in the research policy drawing in Institutional and Foundation level, being a member of the Scientific Board of IESL, and a Representative of Researchers in the Board of Directors of FORTH. His current scientific interests include photonic crystal and microstructured optical fiber devices, whispering gallery mode resonators, optical fiber sensors, optofluidics/magnetofluidics and study of optical materials photosensitivity. He is a Senior Member of OSA and IEEE, a Feature Editor of Applied Optics and an Associate Editor of IEEE/Optica JLT.