Christos Louis, nicknamed Kitsos, is a Greek Molecular Geneticist.
Education
He graduated from the Medical School of the University of Marburg in 1974 and joined the team of Professor Civil Engineer Sekeris, first at Marburg and then at the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg, obtaining his doctoral degree in Cell biology from Heidelberg University in 1977.
Career
His work focuses on Genomics and Bioinformatics of insects and vector-borne/tropical diseases. He performed postdoctoral research as an European Molecular Biology Organization fellow with Walter J. Gehring at the Biozentrum University of Basel (1978-1979) and Paul Schedl at the Department of Biology at Princeton University (1980-1983). During his tenure he was the Chairman of his Department for a total of 11 years.
He retired from the University in 2014 although, as an emeritus, he kept his appointment as Research Staff at the IMBB, now an Institute of the Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas.
From December 2012 till April 2015 he was also the acting Head of Bioinformatics at the Centre for Functional Genomics at the Department of Experimental Medicine of the University of Perugia. His research interests include:
Insect Molecular Genetics with emphasis on Genomics.
Genome sequencing and post-genomic expression analysis. Study of the molecular interactions between Anopheles and the Malaria parasite.
Development of biomedical ontologies, especially for medical entomology, and databases.
With his colleagues in Crete, he developed AnoDB/AnoBase, the first genetic databases for Anopheles, which later evolved into VectorBase. Epidemiology and biology of vector-borne diseases.
Membership
Fotis Kafatos invited him to join the staff of the IMBB of the, then, Research Centre of Crete in 1983. He subsequently became a member of the Faculty of the Department of Biology at the University of Crete where he was promoted to Full Professor in 1989. Later, he was a founding member of the University of Crete"s Programme on Bioethics.
He has served on a number of national (Greek) and international committees and boards, and he is a member of European Molecular Biology Organization. He was a member of several standing and ad hoc committees of the World Health Organization/TDR, including its Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC).
Kitsos Louis has been a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals and has co-authored more than 160 scientific publications. He was a member of the European Drosophila Genome Project and the Anopheles Genome Project.