Christos E Athanasiou
Christos Athanasiou is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech’s Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, where he leads the Daedalus Lab. The lab’s mission is to advance the fundamental understanding of the mechanics and physics of materials to address global challenges in energy access, resource efficiency, and sustainable development. His work integrates advanced experimental methods that capture material behavior under realistic operational conditions, rational mechanics-based design principles, and tailored AI- and physics-driven modeling. Together, these core elements enable the development of a new generation of life-cycle-efficient, cost-effective plastic composites and structures, engineered for demanding applications ranging from low-cost sustainable packaging to unmanned vehicles and space construction.
Christos is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the ASME Orr Early Career Award. His research has been featured by Forbes, The Weather Channel, WSB-TV, and other media outlets, and he has delivered a talk at TEDx Atlanta.
Christos holds a Ph.D. in Photonics from EPFL and conducted postdoctoral research at Brown University’s School of Engineering, and later jointly at Brown University and the MIT Media Lab.
Professor Athanasiou teaches solid mechanics and structures, from statics and experimental solid mechanics to fracture. His teaching emphasizes physical intuition, analytical clarity, and systems thinking, enabling students to see the whole before the parts and to lead in modern science and engineering.
The Christos Athanasiou Lab advances the fundamental mechanics and physics of materials, with these insights informing systems-level design and decision-making to address challenges in resource efficiency and sustainable development. His work integrates advanced experimental methods that capture material behavior under realistic operational conditions, rational mechanics-based design principles, and tailored AI- and physics-driven modeling. Together, these efforts enable the development of life-cycle-efficient, cost-effective materials and structures for demanding applications ranging from sustainable packaging to space construction.
Disciplines:
- Structural Mechanics & Materials
AE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:
- Large-Scale Computations, Data, and Analytics
- Mechanics of Multifunctional Structures and Materials
- Space Exploration and Earth Monitoring
- Sustainable Transportation and Energy Systems
- Postdoc, Brown University & Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT);
- PhD, Photonics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 2018;
- Diploma, Applied Physics, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), 2012
- D. Georgiou, D. Sun, X. Liu, C. E. Athanasiou* “Suppressing Mechanical Property Variability in Recycled Plastics via Bio-inspired Design”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025)
- D. Georgiou, D. Okegbu, Z. Yang, T. Wang, M. R. Snowdon, A. Mohanty, N. Gershenfeld, W. Yan, C. E. Athanasiou*, “Eco-voxels: Building Blocks for Sustainable Load-Bearing Structures” Matter (2025)
- R. Yi, D. Georgiou, X. Liu, C. E. Athanasiou* “Symbolic Regression-based, Model Free, Method for Fracture Investigations”, Journal of Mechanics & Physics of Solids (2025)
- P. M. Stathatou, C. E. Athanasiou, M. Realff, “From Circularity to Spirality: An Integrated, Systems-Level Approach to Address the Plastics Problem”, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2025)
- D. Gokhale, P. M. Stathatou, C. E. Athanasiou, P. S. Doyle, “Yeast-laden Hydrogel Capsules for Scalable Trace Lead Removal from Water”, RSC Sustainability (2024)