A Greek in Antarctica, 80 Days

Ioannis Baziotis was born in Athens in 1980, graduated from the Geology Department of the University of Athens in 2002 (admission year 1998), and received his PhD from the School of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2008. He carried out postdoctoral research at NTUA in the two years 2008-2010. In 2012 he went to America where, under the guidance of Larry Taylor, -one of the best Scientists in Planetary Science-, he published a report on the most important meteorite originating from the planet Mars, Tissint. The research was funded by NASA. This was followed by postdoctoral research in mantle xenoliths, with the aim of understanding the heterogeneity of the mantle on a micrometric scale. The research was funded by the Greek State and the European Union, and was carried out in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Perugia. This research work was included in the NSRF good practice projects. In 2014, he was hired as a lecturer in Mineralogy-Petrology at the Department of Natural Resources Utilization and Agricultural Engineering, of the Agricultural University of Athens, while since 2016 he has been an assistant professor.

He is active internationally, participating in conferences as an invited speaker, in Universities, and speaking to the general public. He has a rich scientific work, with many of his papers published in journals with a high validity index. It has developed excellent collaborations with numerous Universities (e.g. California Institute of Technology, University of Tennessee, Open University of London, University of Muenster) and Organizations (e.g. NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Natural History Museum of Vienna) of abroad, most of which are supported by National or International – funded – programs. He is an evaluator of Scientific journals and research programs for the NASA organization.