Achilleas Gravanis is Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School of the University of Crete and a Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, FORTH.

He has served as a member of the Biomedical Research Program Committee of the European Commission, as Chairman of the Sectional Committee of Life Sciences of the Hellenic National Research and Technology Council, and as a member of the Council of the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation in charge of Life Sciences. He is Vice-Chair of the Hellenic Pharmacological Society, Affiliated Research Professor at the Center for Drug Discovery, Faculty of Pharmacy, Northeastern University, Boston, Affiliated Principal Investigator at Emulate, a Harvard/Wyss Institute spinoff, and Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of Athens LifeTech Park. He is co-founder of the biotechnology spinoffs BioNature and ReNeuroCell Therapeutics.

He has published 166 papers (PubMed, h-index 55). His research group develops synthetic neurotrophin receptor agonists with neuroprotective and neurogenic properties targeting neurodegenerative diseases, and works on 3D microscaffold bioengineering and human neural stem cell technologies to develop neuroimplants for spinal cord injury and brain trauma.