George Hadjipanayis, Richard B. Murray Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware, has been awarded a fellowship by the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program to travel to Greece and work with researchers and graduate students at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Hadjipanayis, whose research focuses on rare-earth, permanent magnets, is one of 30 Greek- and Cypriot-born scholars from 28 U.S. and Canadian universities selected for the fellowship. They will work at 13 universities in Greece, where administrators and faculty members have submitted proposals for collaborative projects.

“The idea is for the work in Greece to be mutually beneficial,” said Hadjipanayis, who will spend two weeks at Aristotle University in December. “They’re interested in my work with magnets [made] without critical materials, and I’m interested in the work they’re doing on using magnetic materials for biomedical applications.”

Permanent magnets produce a strong magnetic field and can be used in the production of motors, particularly in such “green energy” applications as electric vehicles and wind turbines. They are made today with rare-earth materials that can be very expensive to obtain, so scientists like Hadjipanayis are seeking alternate materials.

Two weeks is a limited time, he acknowledged, but it’s expected to give a boost to the Greek researchers’ work and to be the start of expanded and continuing collaborations, which might also bring researchers from Greece to the U.S. in the future.

Hadjipanayis plans to spend his time at Aristotle University giving some lectures and meeting with faculty and graduate students.

He works frequently, often during the summer or UD’s Winter Session, at a research university in Athens. But this program will be his first collaboration in Thessaloniki, a port city in northern Greece.

“I’m looking forward to the start of a great collaboration,” he said.

The Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program was launched in 2016 with a goal of helping to avert Greece’s “brain drain” and develop long-term collaborations between universities there and in North America.

Scholars selected for the program represent a variety of disciplines and will work on projects ranging from medical physics and clinical neurophysiology to modernist poetry and educational psychology. They will not only conduct research but also help develop curricula and teach and mentor graduate students in areas identified by the Greek universities as priorities.

The program is managed by the Institute of International Education in collaboration with the Fulbright Foundation in Greece and is funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

More about George Hadjipanayis

Hadjipanayis, who joined the UD faculty in 1989, is a native of Cyprus who earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Athens and has received numerous awards for his work as a researcher and academic leader.

He has been named a fellow of the American Physical Society, a Humboldt fellow, an IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer and a recipient of the Francis Alison Award, UD’s highest competitive faculty honor.

He is the author of more than 500 publications in refereed journals and has given more than 100 invited talks and over 300 seminars and presentations at meetings and workshops.

In training the next generation of scientists and engineers in the field of magnetism, with a focus on permanent magnets and magnetic nanoparticles, he has supervised 24 doctoral students, 10 master’s degree students and more than 20 postdoctoral/research associates who are now university professors or working in industry or the public sector.