Dr Athos Agapiou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), with expertise in Geoinformatics and Earth Observation. He coordinates the research activities of the EOCult – Earth Observation Cultural Heritage Lab and, in parallel, serves as Acting Director of the MNEMOSYNE Digital Cultural Heritage Research Unit, which focuses on the development of advanced technologies for the documentation, monitoring, protection and promotion of cultural heritage.
He holds a Diploma in Rural and Surveying Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, an MSc in Geoinformatics from the same institution, and an MA from the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Cyprus. His doctoral research focused on remote sensing archaeology. During his studies, he received awards and scholarships from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the Greek State Scholarships Foundation and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Since 2022, he has been Co-Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage, contributing to the development of international collaborations and research and educational activities in the field of digital documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage. Since 2025, he has also been a Visiting Professor in the postgraduate programme Digital Humanities at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Since November 2023, he has been an Honorary Member of the National Committee for Combatting the Looting and Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Heritage of Cyprus, following a decision of the Council of Ministers (898/2023).
He has participated in and coordinated a large number of European, regional and national research projects. During the period 2022–2025, he served as Scientific Coordinator and Project Coordinator of the Horizon Europe project ENGINEER – Civil Engineering and Geomatics Innovative Research on Heritage, focusing on the digital documentation and monitoring of cultural heritage sites. In parallel, during 2023–2026, he coordinated the CONNECTING research infrastructure, funded by the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus.
He also coordinates the CUT team in the European projects Horizon Europe ARGUS – Non-destructive, scalable, smart monitoring of remote cultural treasures, which develops advanced methods for cultural heritage monitoring through digital twins, artificial intelligence, geoinformatics, sensors and satellite remote sensing, and Interreg Euro-MED Wat[H]ER – Water Heritage in European Rural Mediterranean, which explores the use of traditional water-management systems and the adaptation of rural areas to climate change.
Since 2026, he has coordinated the CUT team in the strategic project of the Interreg VI-A Greece–Cyprus Programme, entitled “Development of a Cross-Border Network of Digital Cultural-Tourism Routes”, which uses digital and geospatial technologies for the documentation and promotion of the shared cultural heritage of Greece and Cyprus.
Two additional European projects are expected to begin in early 2027. He is the Coordinator of HEROES – Multi-Hazard Risk Mitigation for Resilient Historic Centres, a 36-month Horizon Europe – Twinning project with a budget of approximately €1.5 million, focusing on the resilience of historic centres to climate change and multiple hazards. In parallel, he will participate in SPACCEL – Accelerating regional innovation ecosystem development and interregional innovation investment for space-enabled applications in European value chains through capacity building, with emphasis on the use of satellite and open data to strengthen regional innovation ecosystems and support small and medium-sized enterprises.
In recognition of his research achievements, in 2018 he received the “Young Researcher” Award from the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus, while in 2023 he received the 1st Young Scientist Award from the Young Scientist Innovation Network (YSIN) of the International Society for Digital Earth. He is consistently included in the annual Stanford/Elsevier bibliometric rankings among the top 2% of researchers worldwide in his field. In parallel, according to ScholarGPS®, he is ranked among the top 0.5% of scholars worldwide, with particularly high rankings over the last five years in Remote Sensing, Earth Observation and Engineering.
A global bibliometric study published in 2024 in Heritage Science ranked him among the three leading researchers worldwide in applications of Geoinformatics to cultural heritage. In a corresponding 2022 study, he was identified among the ten researchers with significant international influence in the application of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to cultural heritage. Since 2024, he has also been a member of the Young Academy of Europe.
He is also actively involved in the editorial activities of international scientific journals. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer Nature), Journal of Cultural Heritage (Elsevier) and International Journal of Sustainable Energy (Taylor & Francis), is Associate Editor of Big Earth Data, and is a member of the International Editorial Board of the International Journal of Digital Earth.
His research interests focus on Geoinformatics and Earth Observation, with particular emphasis on archaeological research, digital cultural heritage, and the monitoring and protection of cultural landscapes. Further information on his scientific work is available on Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and ResearchGate.
