Kosmas L. Tsakmakidis obtained his Diploma degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2002), his Master of Research (MRes) in Electronic Engineering from the 5^*A-ranked Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) of the University of Surrey, UK (2003), and his Doctorate degree (PhD) in Applied Physics and Engineering from ATI, University of Surrey (2009).

During 2008-2013 he was a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC research fellow, first at the ATI, University of Surrey (2008-2010), and then in the Condensed Matter Theory Group, Department of Physics, of Imperial College London (2011-2013). He subsequently worked as a senior postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of California, Berkeley (2014-2015), a Eugen Lommel postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck – University of Ottawa Center for Extreme and Quantum Photonics & the Department of Physics, University of Ottawa (Canada, 2015-2016), and as an EPFL Fellow in the Bioengineering Department, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne (Switzerland, 2017-2018). Since March 2018 he is an assistant professor (tenured since Nov. 2021) in the Department of Physics, Section of Condensed Matter Physics, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece.

He specializes in condensed matter photonics, nanophotonics, topological photonics, metamaterials, plasmonics, ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ light (see a 2012 video), active/lasing nanostructures, computational physics, invisibility cloaking, and light-based chiral sensing schemes, where he has made a number of seminal contributions and introduced key concepts and results in the fields [e.g., K. L. Tsakmakidis, et al., Nature 450, 397 (2007); K. L. Tsakmakidis, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 167401 (2014); K. L. Tsakmakidis, et al., Science 356, 1260 (2017); K. L. Tsakmakidis, et al., Science 358, eaan5196 (2017)]. He is the originator of the broad, multidisciplinary applied-physics research topic known as the ‘rainbow effect,’ referring to broadband slow/stopped & spatially demultiplexed waves. For his work, he has received awards by the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK, 2008), the Institute of Physics (best PhD Thesis prize, 2010), the UK Parliament (2010), the University of Surrey (Researcher of the Year, 2010), the Academy of Athens (Lycurgus Award, 2021), and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2023) [1, 2]. His work is often covered by physics-dedicated and general-media outlets (e.g., APS Physics, Physics World, Physics Today, BBC, The Economist).