User:Vassilis Tsiotras/Georgios Tsianos

Georgios Tsianos is a medical doctor, extreme environment physiologist, researcher, ultra-endurance athlete, public speaker, and honorary university lecturer. Exploring the capabilities of human performance, he combines all his roles in undertaking challenges around the world under very different and extreme environmental conditions.

Early Life
Tsianos was born in Athens Greece. His parents are Georgios Tsianos and Anna Katsigra. In view of his father’s profession, surgeon, during his early years the family lived in various cities in Greece and at one point in England. A dedicated student-athlete in his teenage years, he excelled in competitive pool swimming both at national and international level. To further pursue his swimming aspirations, he moved to the US and enrolled at boarding school. He completed his high school studies at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale Florida, while concomitantly he trained and raced with the school’s swim team.

Education
He attended the University of California - Berkeley and received his Bachelor’s degree in the field of human performance. He then studied for a Master's degree at King's College London on the topic of human physiology in the extreme environments of cold, heat, altitude, diving, air flight and space; his research thesis was on cold water hypothermia and the adaptation mechanisms of the cold shock response. He received his Doctorate degree at the University of Glasgow specialising on the human physiological responses when humans are exposed at high altitude and cold environments; his thesis research experiments included laboratory studies in climatic chambers, as well as field studies in the Scottish Highlands, the European Alps and the Nepalese and Tibetan Himalayas. He completed his Medical degree studies at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine. He volunteered, shadowed, trained, and worked in General Medical Practice, Accident and Emergency Medicine, and Trauma Surgery in hospitals in South Africa, USA, Scotland, England, and Greece. He is certified in General Medicine from the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK. He is certified in Travel Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and Expedition Medicine from medical organisations in the United Kingdom. He holds a certification in Organisation and Management of Health Care Facilities from the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Early Life
alt=doctor on duty|thumb|Medicine on mission Tsianos is professionally based in the Scottish Highlands and practises General Medicine in rural and remote areas within NHS Scotland, and in Greece in his role as Chief Medical Officer for Envia, a Danish based group focusing in Biomedical Sciences with offices across Europe.

Tsianos joins expeditions as Expedition Doctor and participant in various locations around the world in mountains and deserts, at sea, tropical or polar regions. He continues to be active in research and collaborates with FAME Laboratory in his role as the lab’s advisor and leader in the area of expeditions and field studies in environmental human physiology. alt=public speech|thumb|In public speaking He is an honorary lecturer at the University of Thessaly and teaches on extreme environment physiology at the Master’s degree program "Applied Kinesiology in the Armed Forces" and an honorary lecturer at same University for the international Master’s degree program “Lifestyle Medicine” teaching on the holistic approach to medical practice. He is a public speaker and delivers keynote talks at a variety of entrepreneurial, business, medical, scientific, and educational functions.

Sports Career
Georgios Tsianos is a medical doctor, extreme environment physiologist, researcher, ultra-endurance athlete, public speaker, and honorary university lecturer. Exploring the capabilities of human performance, he combines all his roles in undertaking challenges around the world under very different and extreme environmental conditions.

Georgios Tsianos is a medical doctor, extreme environment physiologist, researcher, ultra-endurance athlete, public speaker, and honorary university lecturer. Exploring the capabilities of human performance, he combines all his roles in undertaking challenges around the world under very different and extreme environmental conditions. left|thumb|Swimming in Antarctica In the year 2000, he swam the English Channel, from England to France, a distance of 34 kilometers in 9 hours and 20 minutes. His time was the fastest for the year 2000, and a result for which he was awarded the Channel Swimming Association’s Gold Medal Rolex award.

In 2023, during his role as expedition doctor to a group who travelled to Antarctica, he swam in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. During the swim he successfully recorded unique and rare scientific data on the human physiological responses when swimming in the extreme aquatic conditions of Antarctica. thumb|On top of Everest

In the field of mountaineering, his first mountaineering ascents were on Mount Fuji in Japan and on Mount Olympus in Greece, followed by many others in the Rocky Mountains in Canada, the European Alps, the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet, the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, the Scottish Highlands and multiple others in the Greek mountain ranges.

In 2011, starting from Greece’s mainland southernmost point in the Peloponnese, he swam non-stop to the island of Crete, a distance of 101 kilometers (54.5 nautical miles) in 28 hours and 16 minutes. He became the first person in history to swim across the open Aegean Sea. Through his Aegean swim he raised awareness and supported the work of the philanthropic organization "Horizon" in Crete which looks after children and adults with neoplastic diseases.

In 2015, Tsianos successfully completed the ultramarathon running race Marathon des Sables which takes place in the Sahara. It is a 6-day event covering 250 kilometers, where the participants are self-sufficient and must carry in their backpack all their equipment and food from beginning to end without any external support. Through the Marathon des Sables, he supported and raised awareness for “Opwall Trust”, a British environmental organization dedicated to biodiversity conservation. Throughout the ultramarathon he conducted research and collected scientific measurements on the human physiological responses and performance in high temperature conditions reaching up to 51C°.

Running
Upon the successful undertakings of the Marathon des Sables run, the Mount Everest climb, and the English Channel swim, Tsianos became the first person in world history to complete the "Ice Water Fire" project in 2015. The project consists of unique world-renowned challenges under very different and extreme environmental conditions. He is the founder and creator of "Ice Water Fire", a triptych project which has now been completed by one more athlete worldwide in 2019.

Early Life
Tsianos is a 4th generation medical doctor. She was the first Greek female Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, the first ever elected female University Associate Professor in Greece – for the University of Athens, School of Medicine, served as the Head of the National Maternity Hospital, and wrote numerous pioneering books for that time and guides on several health issues. Tsianos’ paternal grandfather, Vasileios Tsianos, was a General Physician, Chief School Physician for the wider area where he practiced medicine, a front-line doctor during WW2, and the founder of numerous general medical rural practices in the wider regions of Thessaly and Epirus. Tsianos is named after his maternal grandfather, Georgios Ioannou Katsigras. Katsigras was a renowned General Surgeon whose surgical reputation reached many countries outside Greece. He created and built his own Surgical Clinic in Larissa, the Katsigras Clinic, and at the time of operations it was one of the largest of its kind in the entire Balkan region. Throughout his career, it is recorded that he operated on more than 50.000 people. The collective building structures of the Katsigras Clinic were utilised by the Greek Government to set up the foundation infrastructure for the creation of a new Medical School at the University of Thessaly in 1985 the medical school nowadays holds many of its administrative offices and laboratories within those premises. Katsigras was one of the most important art collectors in Greece, a collection of primarily paintings. In 1981 he donated his entire collection of close to 800 works, the 2nd largest collection after the Greek National gallery at the time, to the city of Larisa. The collection also includes the office furniture of famous archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, known for his excavations in the ancient Greek cities of Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns. The furniture were designed by the German architect Ernst Moritz Ziller and were made in Vienna in 1880 under Heinrich Schliemann’s guidance. By ministerial decision from the Greek Government in 2001, they were designated works of art in need of special state protection. All works are exhibited at the ‘Municipal Art Gallery of Larissa – Georgios Ioannou Katsigras Museum’. Tsianos’ father, Georgios Tsianos, a recently retired General Surgeon. He was the first ever Chief of Surgery at the General Hospital of Trikala, while further he pioneered created and led the operation of the Hospital’s Breast Clinic which has been in continuous and successful operation for almost 30 years now. Additionally, he served in several positions including General Hospital of Trikala Medical Director, General Hospital of Trikala Managing Director, and President of Trikala branch of the Hellenic Anticancer Society. Tsianos’ uncle Epaminondas Tsianos was a professor of Internal Medicine at the Ioannina Medical School and served as the Chair of the Medical School.