Panos Papanastasiou is Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Cyprus. He served as the Dean of the Engineering School from 2009-2014. Before that appointment he served as the founding Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2002-2008 and the founding director of the Program of Architecture from 2004-2006. He is also the founding director of the Program Master in Petroleum Engineering. He received his first degree in Civil Engineering from the NTU of Athens in 1984 and his M.Sc in 1986 and Ph.D in 1990 in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He worked more than 15 years in the Oil & Gas industry in the Research Center of Schlumberger in Cambridge, England from 1991 to 2002 and as consultant to Schlumberger in U.K. and Russia from 2002-2007. Since November 2011 is Advisor to the Government of Cyprus on Hydrocarbon exploration and development and gas monetization options. He has published 54 articles in scientific journals, 67 conference proceedings and 5 book chapters, he edited 3 books and he invented 3 patents and wrote 50 industrial reports in the field of Petroleum Engineering. He is editorial advisor for the International Journal of Geomechanics (ASCE) and member of the editorial board of Petroleum Science (Springer Open).

a) Applied and Computational Mechanics: mechanics of cohesive-frictional materials, plasticity theories, micromechanics, fracture mechanics, flow in porous media, finite element analysis b) in Petroleum Geomechanics which includes problems on wellbore stability, hydraulic fracturing, sanding prediction and control, reservoir Geomechanics and CO2 geological storage c) in Oil and Gas management in upstream exploration and production and monetization of natural gas