Achilleas (Achilles) is the founder of ARCUS NEWS, an innovative news publishing platform, which helps businesses and academics to generate productive and sustainable networks through the medium of content posting and communication. He has also been a technical and business advisor in several startup projects, with examples including digital engineering skills e-learning, air-quality monitoring hardware, health tech apps, and e-commerce platforms. Achilleas has also worked on large-scale multi-partner EU industry research projects in applied AI for cybersecurity in infrastructure and machine vision, as well as in augmented reality training tools for first responders. He has held research appointments with the University of Bristol and Aston University to investigate business and social science subjects. He also holds a mentoring position and has helped students and researchers at various universities achieve their professional, academic, or entrepreneurial aspirations. Before his entrepreneurial career, he was a higher research scientist in advanced materials projects at the National Physical Laboratory, investigating nanotechnology-related subjects in the fields of power generation and advanced materials processing and characterisation. Achilleas is an Aerospace and Astronautics engineering graduate (Kingston University, 2006), and a postgraduate in Nanomaterials (Imperial College London, 2007) and Ionising Radiation (University of Surrey, 2008). He also holds an engineering doctorate in Micro and Nano Materials Technology (University of Surrey, 2012).
Fun facts: He loves helping and values altruistic behaviours, and enjoys cooking, knitting, and sports. He also made it to the 3% of ESA's last astronaut selection programme; a childhood dream of his.