Lab Director
Dr Andrie Panayiotou is Assistant Professor in Public Health at the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health, CUT, since 2011. She is an epidemiologist with special interest in preventing cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis and her work has focused mainly on risk factors and biomarkers (genetic, biochemical, environmental and social) for cardiovascular health and disease, while she has recently expanded research work to include risk factors for the cardiorenal syndrome and vascular ageing (arterial stiffness as a proxy for CVD), under the “common grounds for disease” hypothesis. Since 2011 she has established and heads the Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Genetics lab at CII (CVEG –www.cveglab.cut.ac.cy), a dry lab, which houses relevant equipment for arterial stiffness measurements (Complior Analyse, ALAm Medical Inc) and data analysis. The CVEG team includes post-graduate/PhD students, as well as MD/research associates. She additionally co-ordinates “The Cyprus Study”, an on-going general population cohort study which she helped set-up and which participates in several large international consortia publishing joint results in high-impact journals such as Nature Genetics, JACC, BMJ and others (see list of publications). She is experienced in study design, logistics, including sample acquiring and storage, and analysis of large epidemiological studies. AP is also the Secretary and founding member of the newly established Cyprus Atherosclerosis Society (CAS), while she also sits at the board of the National Bioethics Committee and heads the Cyprus Unit on Bioethics under the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics (Haifa). She was recently appointed by CAS as National Lead Co-investigator to set-up the Cyprus National Registry for Familial Hypercholesterolemia (Cyprus-FH), part of a global effort on FH (EAS-FHSC).
Lab Members
Dr. Galatia Photiou
Dr. Galatia Photiou is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at CVEG Lab and she is currently a Researcher within the Resilient Society Department of the Eratosthenes CoE working on Epidemics/ Health area. Galatia is an epidemiologist with a PhD in Environmental and Public Health from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) focusing on Cardiovascular Epidemiology. The aim of her PhD was to decode the effect of social gradient and area indicators on arterial health: From the community to the individual and back (DEpICT study). Galatia has an MSc in Environmental Health from Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health in association of Harvard School of Public Health of Cyprus University of Technology and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Crete. Through these years she has gained experience in both research-led and project management roles at the Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Genetics Research Lab (CVEG Lab) group at CUT under the supervision of Dr. Panayiotou (Lab Head). She was a co-investigator of the CARTESIAN – CY: “Covid-19 effects on ARTErial StIffness and vascular AgiNg”, a prospective cohort multicenter collaborative study on medium- and long-term vascular consequences of COVID-19 recently published at the European Heart Journal (IF: 39.3) and receiving widespread attention (including a Nature aging Research highlight article). She has been a project manager and research associate for the Erasmus+ small scale programme e-CREDENTIAL: Educating, Creating awareness and Empowering women with familial hypercholesterolemia and contributing to the development of a national patient registry for Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) in Cyprus (Cyprus-FH). She also has extensive teaching experience in various fields of Public Health and is experienced in study design field work and study logistics, including relevant data acquiring and analysis. Her main research interest lies in the interplay between individual and area-level factors for arteriosclerosis and arterial ageing.
Collaborators
Dr. Nicos Middleton
Dr. Nicos Middleton, BSc (UCL, 1997), MSc Health Care Decision Analysis (LSE and LSHTM, 1998), PhD Epidemiology (Dept Social & Community Medicine, now Dept Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol, 2004) is Associate Professor in Health Research Methodology and Biostatistics at the Department of Nursing, School of Health Sciences, Cyprus University of Technology. Previous affiliations include the Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol (Lecturer in Medical Statistics, 2004-2005), the Harvard School of Public Health (postdoctoral research fellow, 2006-2008) and the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health (visiting Lecturer, 2006-2008).
At CUT, he teaches a range of research-orientated subjects: Research Methodology, Basic and Applied Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Evidence-based practice and Scientific Writing Skills, at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. He has supervised or co-supervised >30 doctoral and postgraduate students and young researchers. In 2024, he was awarded the first Excellence in Teaching award, a new scheme introduced by the University. He has served as Department Chair (2014-2016) and Dean of School of Health Sciences (2016, 2018-2020).
His core interests are on health inequalities, with a focus on socio-environmental and psychosocial determinants of health, as well as health services evaluation. Dr Middleton has led or participated as co-investigator in several research projects, funded by European or local agencies. To date, his track record includes >150 articles in peer-reviewed journals (GoogleScholar: >6000 citations, h-index=42, i10-index=93). Over the years, he has disseminated this work widely at major conferences, including the annual European Public Health conference and IEA World Congress of Epidemiology,
Since public health policy and practice are not well developed in Cyprus. Dr Middleton believes in the role of the academic community to advocate through formulating “policy-driven research” i.e. research for the purpose of driving policy, and thus, the need for increased integration of methodological approaches within a participatory action research and learning framework.
In the period 2015-2017, he was the Scientific Coordinator of the “BrEaST start in life” project (EEA Grants, 2014-2017) – a nationwide longitudinal study of mother-newborn dyads across all maternity clinics in Cyprus which provided first-time national breastfeeding indicators and explore the determinants of initiation, continuation and exclusivity of breastfeeding, including the adherence of maternity clinics to the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative 10 steps for successful breastfeeding. He is currently a member of the ad hoc Working Group of the National Breastfeeding Committee for the development for the assessment process of maternity clinics according to the WHO Baby-Friendly Initiative certification criteria (2021-)
He was PI of “Baby Buddy Forward” (Erasmus+, 2017-2021), a participatory action research project, which co-developed the Baby Buddy webapp with the active engagement of all local stakeholders, a purposeful multilingual digital platform for enhancing health literacy among various socio-cultural communities in Cyprus during the transition to parenthood. Soon after launch, Baby Buddy was awarded three awards: Cyprus Responsible Business Gold Award 2020 for “Prevention and Health”, Healthcare Business Bronze Award 2020 for “Contribution to health by civic society”, Cyprus Mother and Baby Award 2021 for “Best Information Service”.
The findings of the Baby Buddy project have led to two sequel projects under the Respectful Maternity Care framework, which he coordinated: “Baby Buddy Communicator” (Erasmus+, 2022-2024) on enhancing commination skills training of healthcare providers and “RESPECT” (CERV, 2022-2024) on shifting current practices around shared decision-making, informed choices and consent.
Dr Middleton is member of the International Epidemiological Association and the Society for Social Medicine (UK). During 2016-2020, he served as Government Representative in the Board of Directors of the Health Insurance Organization (responsible for the Cyprus healthcare system reforms-GeSY). He also represented the CUT School of Health Sciences in the Working Group for the Human Resources Planning (of the Capacity Master Plan, Ministry of Health (2022- ). He was a Founding member, Vice-President (2022-2024) and currently President elect of the Board of the newly established (2022) Cyprus Epidemiology and Public Health Association, national representative of Cyprus in the European Public Health Association and affiliated member of the International Epidemiological Association.
Dr. Ourania Kolokotroni
Dr Ourania Kolokotroni is a Paediatrician with a PhD in Epidemiology, Assistant Professor at the School of Health Sciences at the Cyprus University of Technology. Dr Kolokotroni started her research career as the Research Coordinator of the Paediatric Respiratory Research Unit at the Cyprus International Institute for the Environment and Public Health and worked within a team that laid foundations for epidemiological research in Cyprus. She was involved in the organization and conduction of large population studies that investigated the association between obesity and chronic diseases such as asthma in children. In addition, her PhD work was on the prevalence of Hypovitaminosis D, its determinants and association with asthma. More recently Dr Kolokotroni participated in a number of applied research projects aiming to improve health promotion services provided by local NGOs. She was the Researcher Liaison between the Cyprus Breastfeeding Organization and the research team of the Cyprus University of Technology for the BrEaST Start in Life Project that investigated breastfeeding rates and determinants of breastfeeding in Cyprus. She also participated in the Erasmus project Baby Buddy Forward which used the participatory action research approach to transfer and contextualize a health digital app developed for parents in the UK to the Cyprus setting. Within the context of her clinical work and research on health literacy, she has been involved in activities to deal with improved communication with parents and health professionals on vaccine hesitancy.
Dr. Angelos Kassianos
Dr. Angelos Kassianos is a Lecturer in Health Psychology at Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), where he leads the Behavioral Science in Health – BSiH Lab. With a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Surrey, Dr. Kassianos has broad research and teaching experience across the UK and Cyprus, including roles at UCL, Cambridge, and Imperial College London. His work centers on behavioral medicine, public health, psychosocial oncology, digital health interventions, and determinants of health behaviors such as vaccination and medication adherence. He has led and collaborated on major projects funded by national and European bodies, contributed as editor and reviewer for leading journals, and served on multiple international committees. Dr. Kassianos is a recipient of awards such as the EHPS Young Researcher Award (2018) and the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation Early Career Researcher Award (2020), and he is active as a board member and representative within several National and European scientific societies.
Dr. Panayiotis Kouis
Dr. Panayiotis Kouis is a Visiting Lecturer at the Medical School of the University of Cyprus and member of the Respiratory Physiology Laboratory. His research activities primarily focus on the study of chronic respiratory diseases with a special interest in the health impact of environmental exposures and climate change on sensitive subgroups and he is experienced in the performance of observational studies and randomized trials, as well as in evidence synthesis and cost-effectiveness in healthcare. Furthermore, since 2013, he has been collaborating with the Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Genetics Laboratory at Cyprus University of Technology and has been involved in several research activities focusing on cardiovascular health and epidemiology. Dr Kouis is also a faculty member at the Cyprus Harvard Endowment Program for the Environment and Public Health and a member of the ERN-LUNG European Reference Network and the European Respiratory Society BEAT-PCD Clinical Research Collaboration.
Dr. Andreas Kousios MD, MSc, FRCP
Dr Andreas Kousios is a consultant nephrologist at Nefronitda Medical Centre. He graduated from the University of Thessaloniki Medical School and trained in general medicine and nephrology in Nicosia (Cyprus).
Dr Andreas Kousios continued his clinical training at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in 2016. He served as a consultant Nephrologist at Imperial (St Mary’s Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital), one of the largest referral nephrology and transplant centres in Europe, providing specialist care for a population of over 4 million in West London. He has expertise in chronic kidney disease and general Nephrology, Transplantation, Living Donation and Paraprotein-related renal disease.
Dr Andreas Kousios holds a master’s degree in molecular medicine and genetics and a master’s degree in Epidemiology. He has presented clinical research work at international and national meetings and published in high impact peer-reviewed journals.
He is also actively involved in education and medical training as an associate clinical professor of Nephrology at the Medical School of the European University of Cyprus and has served as an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London.
Dr Andreas Kousios is an elected member on the board of the European Kidney Transplant Association (EKITA) and the Onco-nephrology working group of the European Renal Association.