Pol was born in Chania, Crete, Greece in 1974.
For his work as Principal of the GLCI of Evangelismos he was a finalist for the 2024 Principal’s Award by the Modern Language Teachers’ Association of Western Australia, which is awarded annually to a principal from any daily or Saturday school in WA to acknowledge individuals who have significantly contributed to languages education in the state.
Pol has won the National Book Award for Young Adult Literature in Greece, in 2016, for ‘Just one breath’, the second novel of his ‘Trilogy of Crete’ crime novels. He has also won twice the National Award for Playwriting in Greece as well as the IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) – Greek Section award in 2023 for his novel “Fire”.
‘Athenian Blues’ and ‘Baby Blue’ are the first two novels in the Stratos Gazis crime series, which is published by Bitter Lemon Press in the UK, USA and Australia and by Patakis Publications in Greece.
Publishers Weekly, which for 150 years has been considered the “bible of the books business” in the USA has compared Pol favourably to James Elroy, the leading American crime writer.
Pol’s plays have been staged and won awards in the USA, UK and Greece and have been published in Canada.
In Greece, he has published 16 novels, 1 collection of poetry and 2 children’s books.
The National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos”, whose President is the President of the Hellenic Parliament, has honoured Pol with its highest distinction, as a Fellow of the Foundation, for his contribution to the purposes of the Foundation through his novel “When he was happy” (Patakis Publications, 2013) and through his theatrical play of the same title which won the national award.
Pol received his 5-year Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, in Greece and his PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete.
For three years (2006-2008) he was an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of McMaster University, in Canada.
From 2009 until 2015 he was an Assistant Professor and then promoted to Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Crete, in Greece.
In January 2016 he joined the School of Information Technology of Murdoch University, in Perth, where he is an Associate Professor.
Between 2018-2023 he served as Academic Chair of the Master’s by coursework program in Information Technology at Murdoch. Since February 2023 he serves as Associate Dean of the School of IT at Murdoch.
In 2021 he was honoured at Murdoch University with the Pro Vice Chancellor Education Citation for Excellence in Enhancing Student Learning.
Pol has written more than 130 scientific papers, which have been published in international journals and conferences in his research fields (Computer Networks and Data Science).
He holds a patent on energy saving for wireless networks which has been acquired by Blackberry Limited.
