Aggeliki Barberopoulou's research is broadly centered on natural hazards and risk, with the goal of understanding the response of the environment to natural disasters in order to better prepare for, respond to and recover from them. She has provided technical assistance and support to experts’ panels, emergency management (for planning/preparedness) and has participated in community preparedness, training, exercises, evaluations/assessments, and post-disaster field surveys.

For more than ten years she worked extensively with emergency management officials and represented California as the numerical modeler of the Golden State at the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program and the Tsunami Steering Committee of California. In New Zealand she also served in the Tsunami Experts Panel (TEP) that provides support and advice to the Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Management (MCDEM) during a tsunami.

Barberopoulou holds a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle, W.A., and a PhD in Geophysics also from the University of Washington.

Following her graduation, she joined the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) as a postdoctoral research associate. This research position was her official starting point of work in tsunamis. Three years later she joined the Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty as a Research Assistant Professor until 2011 when she accepted a position as permanent tsunami scientist across the Pacific at GNS Science, New Zealand. She has also held positions as a research scientist at the National Observatory in Athens and more recently as a senior scientist at AIR in Boston.

Since 2019 she has been teaching Geography and GIS in the Department of Geography and Sustainability of Salem State University. She is currently an editor for the Journal of Landslides and a reviewer for several other journals.