Brief Portrait

Dr Yiannis Koutedakis is a Professor Emeritus in applied physiology at Thessaly University (Greece) and a visiting Professor at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He has been Dean and Head of Department, founding board member of the Centre of Research & Development in Thessaly (CERETH), and director of the Institute of Physical Performance and Rehabilitation, Greece. Formerly an elite sportsman and national coach (for both Greece & UK), he has also been involved in dance as elite dancer and professional teacher. He was one of the founders of the British Olympic Medical Centre, where he worked with various Olympic Squads and professional dancers. Furthermore, he has taught exercise physiology at the London Contemporary Dance School and English National Ballet School, whilst he has acted as external examiner in several European Universities. He has further been the author and director of the World’s first university-based MSc courses in “Dance Science” (Wolverhampton University, UK, 2002) and in “Military Fitness and Wellbeing” (Thessaly University, Greece, 2013). His initial research interests were focused on human physical fitness and – inter alia – he has led research into athletes' and dancers' fitness and welfare commissioned by the British Olympic Association & Dance UK, respectively. However, his research has been shifted into examining elements of health and quality of life in different populations, including passive smokers, obese individuals, rheumatoid arthritis and dancers. The impact of this work is partly evidenced via its usage by reputable agencies, such as the US Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (2008), the WHO Collaborating Centre for Housing and Health (2010), the Scottish NHS (2011), the British Heart Foundation (2012), the South African Thoracic Society (2013), the US Department of Health - Surgeon’s General Report (2014), the European League Against Rheumatism (2016), the UK Society for the Study of Addiction (2017), and the European Respiratory Society (2018). Finally, parts of his work have been adopted by Wikipedia to define terms such as ‘euphoria’ and ‘overtraining’.