Athanasios Boudouridis

Research Scientist
Boulder, CO
Athanasios Boudouridis or "Thanasis" for short is a Research Scientist at SSI working on Magnetospheric Physics. Thanasis grew up in Greece where he got a Bachelor's degree in Physics with concentration in Astronomy, before going to England for a Master's degree also in Astronomy. After a short break (15 months) back in Greece for his military service, he came to the United States and Boston University for his PhD in Astronomy. While at Boston University, Thanasis switched to Space Physics studying the Earth's magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Having endured seven harsh New England winters, Thanasis decided to go to some place with weather closer to that of his home country, so he moved to Los Angeles and UCLA for a postdoc and later a researcher career in space physics. Nine years later, Thanasis followed his wife to Colorado and joined the Space Science Institute in September 2010, where he continues his space physics research on the effects of solar wind pressure fronts on the terrestrial magnetosphere and ionosphere. He is also Co-Investigator of the SAMBA magnetometer chain along the coast of Chile and Antarctica, used to study magnetic pulsations and remotely sense the plasma density in the Earth's plasmasphere. In his spare time, Thanasis enjoys watching sci-fi shows and animations, playing basketball, snowboarding and snowshoeing in the winter, and hiking in the summer, always with his lovely wife by his side. In the last five years their family grew with the addition of two boys, Michael and Raphael, with whom Thanasis now spends most of his free time.