Dr Athos Agapiou obtained his diploma from the School of Rural and Surveying Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (2005). Two years later, in 2007, he obtained an MSc in Geoinformatics from the same university. Also, he holds an MΑ from the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Cyprus (2010), while in 2013, he received his PhD in the field of Remote Sensing Archaeology.
Throughout his studies, he has received various awards and scholarships such as from the Alexandros S. Onassis Foundation, the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, the Technical Chamber of Greece, etc. In recent years, he has participated in a number of research projects at European or regional level (H2020, JPI, Interreg), as well as in national research programs funded by the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF).
From 2021 he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geoinformatics of the Cyprus University of Technology, holder of the "Geoinformatics and Earth Observation" chair, while at the same time he is the coordinator of the research activities of the EOCult laboratory (Earth Observation Cultural Heritage Lab).
From 2022 he is the Deputy Director of the UNESCO Chair of "Digital Cultural Heritage". The aim of the UNESCO Chair is to contribute through cooperation with national and international partners to new advances related to the field of digital cultural heritage, aiming to protect and promote cultural heritage.
From 2021 until today he is acting as the National Delegate of Cyprus for the Horizon Europe program (Cluster 4 – “Digital, Industry and Space”), while previously, from 2017-2021, he was the National Delegate of Cyprus of the European Framework Program "Horizon 2020" for “Space”. During the period 2018-2021, he was the chairman of the steering committee of the Greek chapter "Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology" (CAA-GR). Since 2019 he is an evaluator in the NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP), while he is a reviewer for various European and national funding programs.
From 2022, he is the coordinator of the European project "Civil engineering and geomatics innovative research on heritage" with the acronym ENGINEER, which is funded under the Horizon Europe framework. The ENGINEER research project focuses on the innovative research fields dealing with documentation, digitization, visualization, data exchange, structural design, seismic and conservation engineering of cultural heritage, including monuments and landscapes. He is also the coordinator of the CONNECTING strategic research infrastructure.
His scientific interests include the fields of Earth Observation and Geoinformatics for archaeological research and cultural heritage landscapes. For his overall research work, he has been awarded the "2018 Young Researcher" award at the annual "Cyprus Research Awards" by the Research Promotion Foundation (RPF). Also, according to a Stanford University study first published in 2020, his name is included in annual reports among the top 2% of researchers in the world in his particular scientific field. In 2023 he has been awarded the 1st Young Scientist Award by the Young Scientist Innovation Network (YSIN) of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE). The Young Scientists Award has been established to recognize and honor outstanding young scientists who are active in the field of Digital Earth and who develop innovative research ideas that improve society and the environment.
At the same time and based on the findings of a recent (global) bibliometric study (2024) published in the prestigious scientific journal Heritage Science, of the Springer publishing house, Dr. Agapiou, is among the three researchers worldwide, whose research and related publications receive extensive attention and references from the scientific community, in matters related to Geoinformatics applications for cultural heritage. In a corresponding independent research (2022) published in the same journal about the rapid developments taking place in the field, and related to the fourth industrial revolution and its applications in cultural heritage studies, the name of Dr. Agapiou was included in the list of the first ten researchers worldwide whose research influences the scientific community.
More details about his publications in scientific articles and conference proceedings can be found in Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar as well as in Research Gate.
