Vayanna Makri holds a BSc in Geology and Geoenvironment from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2017), which included an Erasmus+ exchange at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She also holds two MSc degrees: one in Petroleum Engineering from the Technical University of Crete (TUC), Greece, and another in Integrated Petroleum Geoscience from the University of Aberdeen (UoA), UK. In 2021, she began her PhD at the Technical University of Crete, School of Mineral Resources Engineering, supported by Helleniq Energy S.A. through a sponsorship to the Institute of GeoEnergy (FORTH/IG), Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas. Her thesis, “Modelling and kinetic analysis of the thermal maturity of kerogen in Western Greece and its correlation to the prevailing palaeoenvironmental conditions,” focuses on developing kinetic models for understanding the variability in kerogen transformation. To achieve this, her research examines the geological and geochemical characteristics of Mesozoic organic-rich intervals in Western Greece and their depositional environments. It also evaluates burial histories and the use of custom versus standard, library kinetic models, demonstrating how intra-interval variability affects kerogen transformation. 

Her professional experience includes an internship at the Ministry of Environment and Energy in Athens, Greece (2016), a traineeship at ARCEx in Tromsø, Norway (2019), and Geoscientist internships with Capricorn Energy in Edinburgh (2021) and Equinor in Oslo (2023). Since 2024, she is working as a Senior Geologist at Equinor in Norway, contributing to CCS projects, and to well planning projects in the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) as an Operations Geologist. She has authored peer-reviewed scientific papers and presented her research at international conferences (i.e., EAGE, RawMat, and EGU).