Biography
Prof. Nikolas Patronis
Prof. Nikolas Patronis
Department of Physics University of Ioannina, Greece
Title: The application of the activation technique within the technological advances
Abstract: 
Activation technique is a sensitive and accurate analytical method widely applied in nuclear physics research [1]. Within the present work the activation technique was utilized for fundamental research purposes and, specifically, for cross section measurements of medium-to-heavy mass isotopes in the energy region 10-20 MeV. In particular, the cross section of the (n,2n) reaction channel for the 156Dy and 165Ho isotopes was measured. The corresponding irradiations were peformed in the 5.5 MV Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator of the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics at the National Center for Scientific Research, “Demokritos”, Greece. The irradiations were followed by the induced activity measurements through γ-spectroscopy using HPGe detectors.
During the data analysis the performance of Monte Carlo simulations through the GEANT4 toolkit [2] was proved a vital tool for the extraction of important parameters. In particular, the  GEANT4 simulations were performed  for the purposes of simulating the efficiency of the detectors for the decay energies of the product-nuclei taking into account the self-attenuation phenomenon and the coincidence summing effect [3,4]. In addition an innovative method for the extraction of the counting peak integral of photopeaks contaminated with Ge X-ray escape peaks though the GEANT4 reproduction of the pulse heigh spectrum is discussed and presented [5].
Towards this direction, the application of the activation technique taking into advantage the technological advances, and specifically, the simulation codes, is discussed in the context of the study of challenging physics cases and the adoption of challenging experimental set-ups.

References
[1] Gy. Gyürky, Zs. Fülöp, F. Käppeler, G.G. Kiss, and A. Wallner, Eur. Phys. J. A (2019) 55: 41
[2] S. Agostinelli, et al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 506 (2003) 250; J. Allison, et al., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 53 (2006) 270; Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 835 (2016) 186.
[3] E. Georgali, M. E. Stamati, M. Peoviti, N. Patronis, C. Potiriadis, K. Karfopoulos, A. Anastasiadis, M. Axiotis, Z. Eleme, S. Harissopulos, A. Kalamara, M. Kokkoris, A. Lagoyannis, M.I. Savva, I. Stamatelatos, A. Stamatopoulos, T. Vasilopoulou, and R. Vlastou, HNPS Advances in Nuclear Physics vol. 27, pp. 152–154 (2020).
[4]  E. Georgali, N. Patronis, A. Anastasiadis, X. Aslanoglou, M. Axiotis, Z. Eleme, S. Harissopulos,
 A. Kalamara, K. Karfopoulos, M. Kokkoris, A. Lagoyannis, M. Peoviti, C. Potiriadis, M. I. Savva, I. E. Stamatelatos, M. E. Stamati, A. Stamatopoulos, E. Vagena, T. Vasilopoulou, and R. Vlastou, Phys. Rev. C 102, 034610 (2020).
[5] E. Georgali, N. Patronis, A. Anastasiadis, M. Axiotis, S. Harissopulos, K. Karfopoulos, M. Kokkoris, A. Lagoyannis, C. Potiriadis, and R. Vlastou, Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A 985 (2021) 164711
Biography: 
Nikolas Patronis is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Ioannina – Greece, specialized in the experimental study of nuclear reactions. In parallel to his academic career at the University of Ioannina, he has served several times as a Corresponding Associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), being the spokesperson of experiments at the ISOLDE and n_TOF facilities. He has also been the spokesperson of several experimental campaigns at NCSR “Demokritos” in Greece, as well as a member in numerous studies with both stable and radioactive ion beams in other major European facilities, such as GANIL, INFN-LNL, INFN-LNS. KIT, HIL-Warsaw, etc.
He is a reviewer in several high impact journals and main author or co-author of more than 140 publications accompanied by more than 2800 citations. On behalf of his home institute, he is the scientific officer for two major funded European Projects (ESA-G4G, EU-H2020-SANDA).

In addition to his research and administrative duties, Nikolas Patronis has been teaching eight undergraduate and postgraduate courses of the Department of Physics in the University of Ioannina. Since the beginning of his career at the university, he has been leading a "Neutron Physics" group of students. Currently, his group consists of nine students, four of which are PhD students. Over the years he has been the academic advisor of numerous Diploma and MSc thesis projects.