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D
istinguished Professor Dr Kyriacos A. Atha-
nasiou was this year’s winner of the Ne-
mitsas Prize in Engineering, for his outstanding
achievements that have led to countless lives be-
ing saved and the quality of countless more being
improved.
Dr Athanasiou was born in Larnaca in 1960 and
is extremely proud of his Cypriot background
and upbringing. Graduating top of his class from
St George High School in Larnaca, and spending
26 months in the Cypriot army as an officer, Dr
Athanasiou set out to the United States in 1980 to
further his education.
He obtained his BS in Mechanical Engineering
from New York Institute of Technology (1984),
followed by an MS (1985), a PhM (1988) and a
PhD (1989) all obtained from Columbia Univer-
sity. Upon obtaining his PhD, he went directly into
a faculty position at the University of Texas Health
Science Center at San Antonio and the University
of Texas at Austin for the duration of 10 years. In
1999, he joined Rice University as a full profes-
sor, where he held the Hasselmann Chair, and 10
years later he joined the University of California at
Davis as a Distinguished Professor.
In 1993, he started his first company (
OsteoBio-
logics
) in orthopaedic bioengineering, which
brought its first Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) product to the market in 2003. The com-
pany was acquired by Smith & Nephew in 2006.
In 1998, he co-founded
Xilas
(later renamed Dia-
betica Solutions) to develop products for the dia-
betic lower extremity, while in 1999 he co-found-
ed
VidaCare
to bring engineering technologies for
emergency care
to the market. In total, his compa-
nies have brought to the market 15 FDAapproved
products.
Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor of Bio-
medical Engineering and Orthopaedic Surgery, as
well as Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the
University of California, Davis. He is also the
Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal,
Annals
of Biomedical Engineering
. Simultaneously, he
founded a new company, Ariston Medical, which
he currently directs by himself.
The award ceremony
Nemitsas Foundation Prize in Engineering
27 November 2012 at the Presidential Palace