Galanakis started as a Chemist-Oenologist in 2004 in a family-owned business—a laboratory in Chania, Greece. In 2009, Galanakis, along with Eva Tornberg, founded Phenoliv AB which developed a patented process of extracting polyphenol antioxidants from waste water used in olive oil while purifying the same waste water in the same extraction process.[5] The patent, however, was later abandoned due to unknown reasons.[6] In the same year, his first research publication—which highlighted the innovation for the use of dietary fiber suspensions from olive mill wastewater as potential fat replacements in meat products—attracted public interest.[7]
As an agricultural, environmental and food scientist, Galanakis' work is mainly focused on innovation and sustainability in the food industry, particularly more in the activity of "food waste recovery."[8][9] The same research aims to high added-value compounds from wasted by-products in different stages of food production, re-utilize them in the food chain, and make bigger impact in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—such as SDGs 2, 3, 6, 12, 13 and 15.[10] This concept of "food waste recovery" was greatly highlighted in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic which had greatly affected—among others—various global food production chains, food safety, food security, and environmental impacts caused by unsustainable food production around the world.[10][11][12][13][14]
As an educator, he was a professor in King Saud University;[15] currently, he is now a honorary professor at Taif University in Saudi Arabia and a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa while also serving as a research and innovation director at Galanakis Laboratories in Greece.[10][16][1] Aside from being an educator and a multidisciplinary scientist, he had also authored numerous books in his fields of expertise;[3] he is also the founder and the director of Food Waste Recovery Group (SIG5) of ISEKI Food Association in Vienna, Austria;[17][18][19] and the editor-in-chief of Discover Food[20] and Discover Environment[21] journals.
Recognitions
In 2019, 2021-2023, Galanakis was recognized as a "Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Agricultural Sciences" by Clarivate's Web of Science.[1][22][23] From 2019 until 2023, he has also been consistently named and included in the list of the "World's Top 2% Scientists" by Stanford University.[24][25][26][27][28][2]