Evangelos Kontizas obtained his BSc in Physics from the University of Athens in 1969 and his PhD in Astrophysics with a dissertation on "The temperatures of Early Type Stars" from the University of Edinburgh (UK) in 1978. He was a researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Observatory of Athens from 1972 until his retirement in 2011. Dr. Kontizas served as the Director of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (one of the two institutes which merged to form IAASARS) from 1994 until 1999. He held research appointments at the Observatoire de Haute Provence (France) in 1979, at Trieste Observatory (Italy) in 1980, and he was Senior Associate at NASA/GSFC (USA) in 1989-1990. He was a member of the Council of the Greek National Committee for Astronomy, 1994-1996 and 2001-2003 as well as Chairman during 1997-2001. He was member of the WG of IAU on SKY-SURVEYS and a representative of Greece in the Study Panel on Ground Astronomy & Astrophysics European Commission Unit XII-G2, 1994-1995. He was also a member of the Council of Hel.A.S., 1996-1998 and 1998-2000.

Observational extragalactic astrophysics, with emphasis in star formation, stellar clusters and stellar population evolution. He has been working on the star forming properties of the Magellanic Clouds. Since 2004 he has been working with the Athens team for the top-level work package DPAC/CU8/GWP-S-832 "Unresolved Galaxy Classifier" for the GAIA space mission. Classification and parameterization of galaxies is delivered for the Gaia pipeline using theoretical galaxy evolution models of the stellar population. The team is currently financially supported by ESA/PRODEX.