Assoc. Professor Dimitris Tsitsigiannis (Coordinator) is member of the Laboratory of Plant Pathology and Director of Plant Protection and Environment Division of the Department of Crop Science, AUA. He received his PhD in 2004 from the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison in USA (GPA=3.95/4.0). His PhD was funded from 2000-2002 by “ICRISAT-International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics-India” and from 2002 to 2004 he received a Crop Protection Graduate Fellowship from Novartis (Syngenta). In July 2004, he received the prestigious “Dr. George Washington Carver Award” from the USA National Peanut Board for his achievements on “Strategies to reduce aflatoxin contamination utilizing peanut and Aspergillus fatty acid molecules”. Prof. Tsitsigiannis is currently leading a group of 3 PhD postgraduate students, 5 MSc students and 8 undergraduate students working on developing novel, more effective and environmentally sustainable Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies to control important plant diseases utilizing classical and molecular plant pathology approaches in grapes, olives, vegetables, pistachios, field crops. His IPM strategies focus on novel solutions to improve diagnosis, forecasting, epidemiology, monitoring and information on plant pathogens and diseases (including mycotoxigenic fungi and mycotoxins), validation and development of prediction models and Decision Support Systems for plant diseases, discovery and evaluation of novel biocontrol products, evaluation of resistant/ tolerant varieties, use of new technology and service innovations (i.e. applications for remote and mobile diagnosis, precision agriculture in Plant Protection). He has 19 years of experience in mycotoxins research. He has significant experience in management and coordination of research projects through the implementation of H2020, FP7, LIFE and TEMPUS projects. Prof. Tsitsigiannis is currently co-coordinator of the H2020-SFS-17-2017 project OPTIMA and in the National multi-partner project Oenovation. In the past, he has participated in a number of EU projects such as BIOCON (Bilateral Greece-Germany), Mobile Disease Diagnosis-MobDi2, SustUse Fumigants (LIFE), International Joint Master Degree in Plant Medicine-IPM (TEMPUS IV) and others. He is also coordinating several national research projects related to integrated management of plant diseases and plant health. He is Senior Editor of the journal Phytopathologia Mediterranea and Heliyon. He is currently General Secretary of the Hellenic Phytopathological Society and President-Elect of the Mediterranean Phytopathological Union (2018-2020).