Born in Cyprus, Kyriacos A. Athanasiou had a complicated relationship with education. As he recalled in an interview, “I grew up in an environment where a paradoxical situation was taking place. My entire family consisted of uneducated blue-collar people, yet there was a palpable passion for education. I was always a good student but … having no guidance from my parents did not really allow me to develop a particular direction about what to do.” After serving two years in the Greek army, he headed to New York, where, over the course of nine years, he earned four degrees in mechanical engineering: a BS from the New York Institute of Technology, followed by an MS, PhM, and PhD from Columbia University.
Athanasiou found that education gave him direction and purpose. Over the course of his career, he has pioneered advancements in biomedical engineering, high-tech industries, tissue engineering, and medical technology. Among many groundbreaking discoveries, work that he and his group started in the early 1990s has resulted in the only FDA-approved products for the treatment of small lesions on articular cartilage. As he has explained, “We are now in a position to engineer cartilage in the laboratory. This will be live, biological cartilage that will not only fill defects, but will potentially be able to resurface the entire surface of joints that have been destroyed by osteoarthritis.” He has founded six start-ups that have collectively brought to market 15 FDA-approved products. Athanasiou, who has served as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the largest organization of biomedical engineers and bioengineers in the world, is currently Henry Samueli Chair in Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest professional honors in the medical and health fields.
