Name Fotis Kafatos | ||
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Born Φώτης Κωνσταντίνος Καφάτος
April 16, 1940 (age 83)
Heraklion, Crete, Greece ( 1940-04-16 ) Institutions Imperial College London
European Research Council
Cornell University
Harvard University
European Molecular Biology Laboratory Thesis The escape of moths from the cocoon: biochemical, physiological, morphological, and developmental studies (1965) Notable awards Fellow of the Royal Society
EMBO member
Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 2010) Education Harvard University (1965), Cornell University Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
Fotis Constantine Kafatos (Greek: Φώτης Κ. Καφάτος; born 16 April 1940) is a Greek biologist. Between 2005-2010 he was the founding president of the European Research Council (ERC) and member of its Scientific Council. He remains Honorary President of the ERC.
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Research
At the beginning of his career, he contributed to the development of the Complementary DNA (cDNA) cloning technology and worked on the mechanisms of cellular differentiation leading to the formation of the eggs in insects. He has particular interest in malaria research and used his knowledge of the genetics and molecular biology of insects to understand how the insect vector copes with the Plasmodium parasite. He also participated in the sequencing of the genome of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae completed in 2002.
Education
Kafatos was sponsored by Anne Gruner Schlumberger to study in the United States of America. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University on entomology in 1965.
Career
He was Assistant Professor and later Professor and Chairman of the department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Harvard University, Professor of Biology at the University of Athens and at the University of Crete, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas in Heraklion and third Director-General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1993 to 2005. Since 2005, he has been a professor at Imperial College in London. Since 2008, he is the President of the European Research Council.
Fotis Kafatos is an influential Greek biologist, having had a pivotal role in triggering the interest of the Greek government for Science, with the establishment of the Faculty of Biology in the University of Athens, the Faculty of Biology in the University of Crete and the IMBB in Heraklion.
Awards and honours
Kafatos was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003, and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Académie des Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences (since 1982), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
In recognition to his contribution to the development of Biomedical research in Europe, he was awarded a 25th anniversary special prize by the Louis-Jeantet Foundation in 2008. More recently he was awarded the Robert Koch Gold Medal 2010 and the Leibniz Medal 2011, as well as the BioMalPar/EviMalaR Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
Personal life
Kafatos is the brother of Menas Kafatos, a physicist.