Dr Dimitris Tsaltas is an Associate Professor of the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Biotechnology and Food Science at Cyprus University of Technology. He is a founding member of the Cyprus University of Technology since early days in 2007. He has a BSc in Agricultural Sciences and an MSc in Plant Protection from the Agricultural University of Athens. He gained his PhD from Imperial College London in Molecular Plant Pathology and continued his postdoctoral training at the University of Connecticut (USA) in Molecular Microbiology. He also worked at the Agricultural Research Institute (Cyprus) as a Research Advisor within the Crop Protection Department.

He served as a Delegate and Expert of Cyprus to the Program Committee of 7th Framework Program in Food, Agriculture, Biotechnology and Fisheries and as Committee Member in the Food & Agriculture Domain of COST. He is a Board Member of the Mediterranean Phytopathological Union (MPU), and the Greek Phytiatry Society, National Representative at ISEKI Food Association, Ambassador of the Global Harmonization Initiative – GHI as well as Ambassador and International Mentor of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).

He leads the Group of Agricultural Microbiology and Biotechnology. The Group is actively engaging in microbial biodiversity and ecology investigations in agroindustrial fermentations. Next Generation Sequencing technologies are used as a tool for these explorations as well as new approach for authenticating food products (microbiome fingerprinting). The group also engages in exploring biosafety problems in the food chain starting from the farm, such as mycotoxins and human pathogens on fresh fruits and vegetables, to the final processed products. Additionally, Dr Tsaltas team works on biosensors development, food innovation and new product development. Through this extensive and deep analytical capacity, the group offers an array of services to the local food, agriculture, pharma and biomedical industry through consultation and analytical methods unique in Cyprus for various microbiology issues (microbial IDing, microbial genotyping, detection of microbes etc).