Efstathios Z. Panagou graduated from the Agricultural University of Athens in January 1988. He completed his postgraduate studies at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom in 1990–1991, where he obtained a Master of Science degree in Postharvest Technology. In 2002, he was awarded a doctoral degree in Food Microbiology from the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Agricultural University of Athens. He worked for a number of years at the National Agricultural Research Foundation (NAGREF), initially in the Directorate of International Relations, Documentation and Informatics (1994–1998), and then at the Institute of Agricultural Technology as a member of the scientific staff (1998–2007). In April 2007, he joined the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Agricultural University of Athens as a Lecturer in the Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Biotechnology. His research interests focus on the application of rapid analytical techniques (FTIR, electronic nose, multispectral imaging) in the assessment of food spoilage in tandem with multivariate statistical methods and exploratory data analysis, modelling microbial responses in various food ecosystems, the microbial ecology of fermented foods of plant origin with an emphasis on table olives, and the effect of ecophysiological factors on the growth and toxin production of mycotoxigenic fungi on food.