George Kiriakidis, Professor of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete and Head of the Transparent Conductive Materials (TCM) research group at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), has been unanimously elected as the President of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) for the period 2017-2019. Prof. Kiriakidis has served as vice-President of the E-MRS for the last four years. It is the first time that a Greek materials scientist is voted in the E-MRS leadership.

Nektarios Tavernarakis, the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), and Professor at the Medical School of the University of Crete was awarded the Galien Scientific Research Award at a ceremony that took place on April 1st, under the auspices of the President of the Hellenic Republic Mr. Prokopios Pavlopoulos, at Megaron, the Athens Concert Hall.

Research carried out at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology-FORTH and published today in Nature Cell Biology (http://www.nature.com/ncb/index.html) reveals that DNA repair factors ERCC1 and XPF play a crucial during mammalian development.