I was born in Elefsis, Greece, where I grew up with my twin brother, Panagiotis. As a young man, I studied physics and mathematics at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, where I received my BS in 1976. I then traveled to Montreal, Canada, where I studied atmospheric sciences, receiving my Ph.D in 1982 from McGill University. For the next three years I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Atmospheric Environment Service, Cloud Physics Division, at Downsview, Ontario. In 1985 I joined the Department of Geosciences at the University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee (UWM) as an Assistant Professor, to develop an Atmospheric Sciences group. Now I am an Emeritus Distinguished Professor in the department of Mathematical Sciences, where the group moved to in 2000.

My work has focused on the study of Atmospheric Sciences, specifically in the areas of climate dynamics and variability, and global change. I was one of the first scientists to promote the application of Chaos theory and nonlinear data analysis in the Atmospheric Sciences community. In a series of papers in the late 1980s I popularized and introduced this theory to meteorologists. In 2004, I was the first scientist to apply the concepts of “small-world” networks to atmospheric sciences. My research in this area has led to the discovery of a new dynamical mechanism, which, through the notion of connected subsystems in the climate, system explains all major global temperature shifts in the 20th and 21st century. This concept is recently gaining significance in studies of climate change. I have also done significant research in the area of global change, and have published a theory about the relationship of global temperature and the frequency of El Niño.

My interdisciplinary efforts and collaborations in nonlinear methods have resulted in over 15 papers in the subjects of Biology, Economics, Linguistics, and Psychology. With my brother Panagiotis, I have published several important papers on the mathematical properties of DNA sequences, and have developed a hypothesis regarding the mathematical framework for memories and dreams. This hypothesis has recently been verified experimentally.

I have held associate editor positions for several journals and I have been an invited speaker to over 50 meetings. I have authored over 135 scientific papers, and ten books including four research books (Chaos: From Theory to Applications 1992, Singular Spectrum Analysis 1996, Nonlinear Dynamics in Geoscience 2007, Advances in Nonlinear Geosciences 2018),  two textbooks (An Introduction to Atmospheric Thermodynamics 2002 and 2007, Weather Stricken 2012) one popular science book (Randomnicity: Rules and Randomness in the realm of the infinite 2008), the novel Parallel 2013, a translation of the epic Greek poem Kura Frosunh 2008, and a book on Aristotle’s Metewrologika 2020. In 2020 my textbook An introduction to Atmospheric Thermodynamics was translated into Chinese.