Professor A.N. Perakis was born in Ierapetra, Crete, on July 23, 1953. He grew up in Chios until 1962 and then moved to Athens, where he lived until 1977. In 1962, he was admitted to the Athens College with a scholarship, and in 1972, he graduated first in his class from the Athens College of Psychiko (Citibank Award). Immediately afterward, he was admitted to and graduated among the top students from the Department of Naval and Mechanical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), 1972-77. He completed all his graduate studies with a scholarship at MIT (1977-82), where he obtained two Master’s degrees (1980), a Ph.D., and an MBA (1982). He was then appointed as a professor at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), where he was granted tenure in 1988 and worked until the end of 2020.

For his teaching, research, and many services to the university and his profession, he has been honored with many significant awards, including the Distinguished Service Award of Class 38E (1987), the highest award given to young professors at the Michigan College of Engineering, the Office of Naval Research Distinguished Faculty Fellow, the Welliver Faculty Fellow of Boeing Company (one of only 9 members across the USA), SNAME Fellow (2003), and Michigan Energy Institute Fellow (2008). More than half of the doctoral students he chaired have become professors at universities in the USA and Greece.

In 2018, he founded the company “Prometheus Transport Research,” where he is currently the President and CEO. He is an expert in Probabilistic Modeling and Optimization of Marine Systems, Transport Optimization, particularly of maritime and intermodal transport, reliability and safety analysis of systems and structures, and the economic impacts of proposed environmental regulations. Since 2022, he has been an Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan, but he continues to give lectures and teach, as well as collaborate on research with top universities worldwide, particularly in China, Germany, and the UK.