Dr. Constantin D. Athanassas

The badlands of Alberta are one of the few captured memories from my early childhood in Canada. While growing up in Greece I became fond of the most celebrated space opera; the sparsely inhabited desert-planet scenery kept my early memories of dry and eroded terrains sharp, evoking the desire of exploration. I was therefore destined to become a geophysicist!

I have a BSc in Geology (University of Athens, 2002), an M.Phil in OSL dosimetry (University of Wales, 2005) and a PhD in Tectonics and OSL dating (University of Athens, 2010). I have worked as a research associate with the National Center for Scientific Research (NCSR) “Demokritos” (2011-2013), and then I completed a cycle (2013-2015) of postdoctoral research with the C.E.R.E.G.E., France, in cosmic ray exposure dating of rock surfaces. Very recently (2016), I earned an MSc degree in Geoinformatics from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Currently, I am conducting further postdoctoral research in Geophysics with the NTUA.

I have led research projects in the circum-Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Atlantic Ocean, involving i) the neo-tectonic structure of the upper crust of SW Greece, ii) the structural evolution of the Santorini caldera through cosmic ray exposure chronometry, iii) OSL chronometric studies at the Canary Islands, iv) OSL-assisted paleo-topographic reconstructions in SW Greece, v) OSL dating of geomagnetic reversals, vi) OSL dating and spatial analysis of geometric lines in the Northern Arabian Desert and vii) OSL dating of megaliths in Iberia.