George Papatheodorou is Full Professor of Environmental and Geological Oceanography in the Department of Geology at the University of Patras, Greece. He served as Head of the Department of Geology from 2013 to 2017 and as Dean of the School of Natural Sciences from 2018 to 2024. He is Director of Oceanus-Lab (Laboratory of Marine Geology and Physical Oceanography) and Director of two Interdepartmental Postgraduate Programmes in “Oceanography” and “Environmental Sciences”.

His research spans a broad range of marine science disciplines, including marine geology, with particular emphasis on active faulting, submarine gravitational sediment movements, and seabed fluid flows; marine pollution, particularly marine litter and heavy metals in marine sediments; marine geoarchaeology; coastal erosion; anoxic and hypoxic landlocked water bodies; and the mapping and characterization of marine and lacustrine habitats. He has served as coordinator and/or principal researcher in more than 170 national, European, and international research projects across diverse fields of marine science.

A major focus of his research over the past three decades has been devoted to the investigation of seabed fluid-flow processes and the activity and evolution of pockmarks and other fluid-escape features, through the coordination of and participation in numerous European and national research projects.

He has also conducted numerous marine geoarchaeological surveys in coastal areas of major archaeological significance in Greece and at several locations throughout the Mediterranean, including Alexandria (Egypt), Croatia, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Corsica, as well as in Argentina. He has authored more than 180 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and over 200 full papers in international conference proceedings, receiving more than 8,000 citations, with an h-index ranging from 43 to 50.