Staff information
Dr Ioannis Kourakis
Centre for Plasma Physicsemail: i.kourakis@qub.ac.uk
Tel: 028 9097 3155
Fax: 028 9097 3110
Room G047
School of Mathematics & Physics
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast
BT7 1NN
Dr. Ioannis Kourakis is Lecturer of Physics at the Centre for Plasma Physics of Queen's University Belfast.
Prior to taking up this post in October 2007, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany). He has also held research posts at the University of Gent (Belgium), the Free University of Brussels (ULB, Belgium) and the University of Burgundy (Dijon, France). He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Crete (Heraklion, Greece), a DEA degree (french MSc) from the University of Burgundy (Dijon, France) and a PhD and a DEA (belgian M.Phil.) in Physics from ULB (Brussels, Belgium).
His main research interests are nonlinear phenomena in Plasma Physics, including electromagnetic (EM) pulse propagation in laser-plasmas, localised nonlinear wavepackets and solitary excitations (solitons) associated with electrostatic (ES) or EM modes in Laboratory and in Space plasmas. Part of his research has been devoted to Dusty (Complex) Plasmas and dust-lattice dynamics, as well as to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and plasma kinetic theory (Fokker-Planck theory, diffusion, turbulence).
His research has also focused on soliton dynamics and instabilities in various physical contexts, including nonlinear metamaterials, nonlinear optics and condensed matter.
In the years prior to his appointment, Dr. Kourakis was selected a Professor Harry Messel Fellow of the University of Sydney (2007), and has also been a Fellow of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany (2005), of the European Union (Complex Plasmas HPRN, 2003-2004) of the Van Buuren Foundation (Brussels, 2000) and of the Fusion Programme of the European Commission (1995-1997).
He has delivered research lectures in a number of international conferences, as well as tutorial talks in the International Centre for Theoretical Physics of the UNESCO (Trieste, Italy) and in the Euratom-Hellenic Republic Association (Greece), among others.
In addition, he was a member of the International Committee of the XII Latin America Workshop Plasma Physics (2007). Dr. Kourakis is a member of the Americal Physics Society (APS), of the Belgian Physical Society (BPS), and of Complex Systems and Applications Group (COSA, Greece), and has served as a reviewer in many research journals.
