Panos Papanastasiou is Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Natural Gas Engineering Program at the University of Cyprus. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Cyprus Hydrocarbon Company (CHC). He received his first degree in Civil Engineering from the NTU of Athens in 1984 and his MSc in 1986 and PhD in 1990 in Geomechanics from the University of Minnesota. He worked in the research centre of Schlumberger in UK from 1991-2002 before moving to Cyprus as a Founding Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2002-2008) and Dean of Engineering School (2008-2014). He has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals, conference proceedings and books and he invented 3 patents and wrote more than 50 industrial reports. He is co-Editor in Chief of the Journal Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment (Elsevier) and Associate Editor for the Journal of Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (Springer). He is in the Stanford University list of the top 2% of scientists worldwide.