Nikos Karnesis graduated from the School of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences of the National Technical University of Athens. He then joined the Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona to work on his PhD on the preparation of the ESA LISA Pathfinder mission (LPF). Before joining the IAASARS, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, the Laboratoire AstroParticule & Cosmologie (APC) in Paris, and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

He participated in the LPF mission operations and is a member of the Virgo collaboration and the LISA Consortium. He was recently invited to the Fundamental Physics Panel of the European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) and was selected by ESA as a member of the LISA Mission Science Team. He has participated in several national projects and has been the principal investigator on projects funded by the ESA Prodex, the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, and the MSCA programmes.