NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS
Vardoulaki Eleni
PUBLIC OUTREACH OFFICER
Office: Thissio
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Dr Eleni Vardoulaki (elenivardoulaki.com) is an astrophysicist with a PhD from the University of Oxford, specialising in active galactic nuclei and their study using data from the broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation (optical, infrared, radio waves, X-rays). She has worked in 6 international institutes as a postdoctoral researcher (2010-2024). She is a member of international collaborations for astrophysics research COSMOS, EMU, RGZ-EMU, LOFAR KPS, MIGHTEE, ngVLA, SKA. She is specialized in the use of international telescopes (optical, infrared, radio) to observe extragalactic sources as well as in writing algorithms and using machine learning (ML) techniques (AI). She has experience in supervising theses and internships at all levels of learning (undergraduate, bachelor, master, PhD). She has attended courses on program management, time management and negotiation. She is a science communicator, with ongoing activities in Greek and English since 2005 in the form of public talks at various events and international organizations such as TED (e.g. TEDx AUAthens 2018, TedXZakynthos 2024), radio and TV interviews, podcasts, articles, videos and art.  She established the public communication hubs Astronomy on Tap Jena (2020-2022), Astronomy on Tap Bonn (2018-2020) and Rogue Astrophysics (2017-) with actions on all social media and trained these groups in techniques of popularisation of science. She has also participated with the Astronomy on Tap team at the American Astronomical Society’s international conferences for five consecutive years (2019-2023) to present science communication activities through pub events as well as online. At the same time, she was a member of the Astronomy on Tap Europe workshop organising committee at the European Astronomical Society’s international conference in 2020. She is a writer of popular science scripts and books for adults and children, with her first book ‘The Universe in Your Pocket’ from Key Books published in June 2022. Finally, she co-leads the EMU citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo EMU and leads the working group recommended by the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) to reduce inequality through citizen science-based education, and is creating an online platform for the public to assist scientists in identifying and categorizing radio sources from EMU data (ASKAP).