Nikos Kyrpides studied Biology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and received his PhD from the University of Crete in 1996. He completed his studies with postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, 1996-1998) and the Argonne National Laboratory (1998-1999), where he specialized in Bioinformatics. In 1999, he moved to the private sector, taking the position of Bioinformatics Director at the newly established company, Integrated Genomics, in Chicago, Illinois. Since 2004, he has been working at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, where he where he currently leads the Prokaryote Program (one of the largest research programs for microbial genomics and metagenomics worldwide) and the Microbiome Data Science.

His research focuses on the fields of Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Data Science, with an emphasis on microorganisms (bacteria and viruses). He has also led the development of several pioneering data managements systems in microbial and viral genomics and metagenomics.

 

He has authored more than 700 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, which have collectively garnered over 81,000 citations. Since 2014, he has been listed as one of the world's most influential scientists by Clarivate. He has received numerous international awards, including the LBNL Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (2022), the J. Roger Porter Award from the American Society for Microbiology (2018), the van Niel International Prize for Systematic Bacteriology from the International Union of Microbiological Societies (2014), the Scientific Excellence Award from the Empeirikeion Foundation (2012), and the Exceptional Performance Award from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2007). In 2014, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.