John Yfantopoulos is Professor of Social Policy and Health Economics at the University of Athens, and ex. President of the National Centre for Social Research Athens, Greece. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of York, UK. Professor Yfantopoulos has extensive teaching and research experience in Social Policy, Public Administration, and Social Inequalities in Health. He collaborated with several Universities like: Katholike University of Leuven, Belgium, Tilburg University the Netherlands, University of Lyon France, University of Barcelona Spain, University of Budapest Hungary, University of Western Siberia Russia, Russian Academy of Science Russia, The Moscow School of Economics Russia, University of East Anglia, U.K, the University of Clark USA, and Harvard University USA.
He has been working and advising the Statistical Office of the European Commission (Eurostat) on poverty and social exclusion as well as other International Organizations like, the World Health Organization, the International Labor Office, and the World Bank. He participated in the Social Protection Committee (SPC) of the European Commission. He was a member of the Core Standing Committee for Social Science in the European Science Foundation (ESF) and he has conducted comparative research based on large European multicultural studies for poverty, health inequalities, and quality of life. He has extensive experience with the Eurostat data sources (HBS, LFS, ECHP, SILC,) as well as with EU Research Projects like SHARE and the (European Social Survey, (ESS)). He was the scientific director of the DG-SANCO project “for the measurement of health inequalities in the European Union” and a Member of the Expert Committee on Health Inequalities in the European Commission. In Greece he was an elected Member of the Senate of the University of Athens, Director of the Red Cross Hospital, Vice President of the National Organization for Social Care, Board Member of the National Medicines Agency (EMA-SFEE), the Organization Against Drugs (OKANA) and a Member of the Research Committee for drafting the legislation on Research. In 2005 in the evaluation of the Greek research centers from an international peer review committee, he received the highest grade (excellent (5)) for his scientific work, commitment to international collaboration and research networking. He has published 31 books, as well as more than 230 articles in international peer review journals.
