He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1989, under the guidance of Michael Christ.

[1] Grafakos is a Curators Distinguished Professor and holds the Mahala and Rose Houchins Distinguished Chair at the University of Missouri.

[2] Grafakos' research interests include Fourier analysis, singular integrals, and Calderón–Zygmund theory.

He is well known for his contributions to the area of multilinear harmonic analysis.

[3] Grafakos has been supported by the National Science Foundation and was a Simons Fellow in Mathematics during the academic year 2022-2023.