Fotis Kafatos

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Fotis C. Kafatos (born in Heraklion,Crete, Greece) is a prominent Greek biologist.

Kafatos received his Bachelor's degree at Cornell University, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1965). 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 in Heraklion and, most notably, Director-General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1993 to 2005. Since 2005, he has been a professor at Imperial College in London. He is a member of the Royal Society of London, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Académie des Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences. He is currently Chairman of the scientific council of the European Research Council.

A prominent scientist world-wide, Fotis Kafatos is the most influential Greek biologist, having had a pivotal role in the establishment of the Faculty of Biology in the University of Athens, the Faculty of Biology in the University of Crete and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Heraklion. His contributions to international science include the development of cDNA cloning technology, the initiation of the Drosophila melanogaster Genome Project, and for his coordinated efforts in the field of malaria research. Towards these ends, Fotis Kafatos spearheaded the consortium of the Anopheles gambiae (Mosquito) Genome Project, which was completed in 2002.

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