Scholarship News
Eleni Vasilaki (2001)
Professor Eleni Vasilaki is Chair of Computational Neuroscience and Neural Engineering at the department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. Eleni is an active researcher, working in the intersection of Machine Learning and Computational Neuroscience. She leads a research team that aims to advance our understanding of the brain mechanisms for learning as well as to apply this knowledge in the design of bio- inspired artificial intelligence methods. Prior to her appointment in Sheffield, Eleni was a member of the world-leading group of Prof. Wulfram Gerstner at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and postdoctoral assistant of Prof. Walter Senn at the University of Bern. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (University of Sussex), a Masters in Microelectronics (University of Athens) and a Bachelors degree (with distinction) in Informatics & Telecommunications (University of Athens). She is Chartered Engineer, registered with of the UK Engineering Council.
Haris Tsotsos (2002)
Haris Tsotsos entered the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in September 1994. He followed the Electronics and Computing specialisation and his dissertation topic included the design of a neural-network-based model and the development of algorithms for the prediction of Ionosphere's Total Electrical Content (TEC). In September 2002, and after having finished with his military service, Haris moved to London, in order to pursue an MSc in Data Communication Systems in the Electronics Engineering department of Brunel University, Uxbridge. His thesis was a study on "Voice over IP (VoIP) over Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) systems" and their deployment in the enterprise market. Throughout his postgraduate studies, he has been supported both materially (a £4,000 scholarship for his 12-month course) and psychologically by the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation and its president, Mrs Nathene Arnaoutis, personally. On completion of his MSc course, it was clear to Haris that he wanted to pursue a commercial career in the fields of technology and industrial applications. Moreover, he decided to obtain a professional experience in UK prior to returning to Greece. Therefore, he spent 3 years working as an Account Manager in "Red Commerce", a SAP recruiting agency and "Frost & Sullivan", a market research and growth consulting company (Industrial Automation and Electronics division). In April 2006, Haris returned to Thessaloniki. Between September 2006 and October 2008, he had been a Sales Engineer for Zeus S.A. (part of the Italian group SOL), responsible for the commercial activities and applications of industrial gases and welding machines in northern Greece. Since November 2008, Haris is a partner and Sales Director in ALPHAWELD, a company that imports and distributes welding machines, industrial tools and consumables in the Greek market.
Nikolaos Trichakis(2003)
Nikos Trichakis is Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Nikos was on the faculty of Harvard Business School. He received his BS degree from Aristotle University (Greece), and MS degrees from Stanford University (USA) and Imperial College (UK)---as a scholar of The General Arnaoutis Charitable Foundation---all in electrical and computer engineering. He holds a PhD in operations research from MIT.
Maria Marinidou (2003)
Maria studied for her first degree in the department of Electrical Engineering of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She completed a Master Degree in telecommunications with a distinction.. She is currently working as a telecommunication research engineer at University College London for French Telecom Research and Development specializing in the design and development of enhanced mobile and fixed services.
Alexandros Dafkos (2004)
Alexandros Dafkos completed his studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, He attended (during the academic year 2004/05) the MSc Communications and Signal Processing course at Imperial College London. As a part of this postgraduate programme, he worked out an MSc Thesis under the title "Univariate and multivariate surrogate data based tests". Since July 2006 he works as a software engineer in London for Symbian Ltd, that develops Symbian OS, a widely used operating system for mobile phones. For more than two years he has worked across the User Interface Framework and Graphics departments of the company. In January 2009 he will move to the Research and Development department of NOKIA in London.
Vasileios Exadaktylos (2004)
Vasilis graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2004. From October 2004 till September 2007 he was working on his PhD thesis in the area of Control Systems (thesis title: Model Predictive Control Strategies in the Non-Minimal State Space) and was awarded the PhD degree, from the University of Lancaster, UK in April 2008. Since September 2007 he is a post-doctoral researcher at the KU Leuven (division M3-BIORES) and is working on analysis of bio-signals and bio-responses, while his responsibilities also include doctoral student supervision and project management. Currently 7 PhD students depend on his daily coordination. He is also coordinating 4 research projects and is establishing the start of 4 new ones. His research interests include Precision Livestock Farming and Biological Signal Processing in relation to Cognition. He also has a consulting role for BioRICS (www.biorics.com) and SoundTalks (www.soundtalks.be), the two spin-off companies of the M3-BIORES group.
Ioannis Spyridon Gousias (2005)
Dr Ioannis Spyridon Gousias was born in Peiraias, Hellas. First in rank graduate student of the Experimental High School of Anavryta and holder of a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, completed his postgraduate studies in Integrative Neurosciences in Imperial College London as scholar and ranked first among all the postgraduate students of the year. He completed his PhD in Medicine in Imperial College London, funded by the Arnaoutis Foundation, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC) and the Medical Research Council UK (MRC). Research Fellow in ICL, winning a very competitive grant from the organization Action Medical Research. Working on anatomical modeling and brain atlasing of the developing, neonatal and pediatric brain. His research was on the front cover of the scientific journal NeuroImage in April 2008. In June 2008, STATUS magazine included him in the “Winners” of the year. In 2009 he won the “NOBELini” prize for young scientists, from Nobel Laureates and the No.1 Scientific Journal “Nature”. In February 2010 he presented in the Science Museum of London the first allegoric prototype installation “Albert in Neuroplastic Land”, inspired by his research on neonatal brain neuroplasticity and his big affection for his brother Alvertos (Albert). Ioannis is an advanced violin player, speaks five languages, works voluntarily in hosting centres for orphans and sponsors along with his family developmental works in Ethiopia, while has served as President in the European Youth Parliament. Candidate Member of the Parliament in the Honorary State Ballot in the elections of January 2015 and September 2015 with the Centre - Right Party “Nea Dimokratia – New Democracy”.
Konstantinos Bavelis (2005)
Konstantinos Bavelis graduated from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2005. Afterwards with the financial and moral support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation continued his studies in postgraduate level at United Kingdom. In 2006 he completed his MSc degree in Advanced Photonics and Communications at University of Warwick and in 2011 he completed his PhD in Engineering at the same University. Following that he returned to Greece for his military service and then he worked at the Computational Electromagnetics Laboratory (TEMF) of Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany. He then worked at the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) for three years and at Public Power Corporation S.A. (PPC) for another three. Since August 2020 he works for the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator S.A. (HEDNO).
Anna graduated from the University of Macedonia of Economic and Social studies with a degree in Economics. During the four academic years of her undergraduate studies she received scholarships for academic excellence from the State Scholarships Foundation (Greece) and the “Rotary Club of Thessalonica”. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, having achieved a first for her postgraduate studies in Operational Research (MSc). She is an experienced analytics professional, in industry and the consulting sector and specialises in the field of predictive analytics. In her free time she enjoys playing tennis and running.
Ioannis Sarras (2005)
Ioannis Sarras was born in Athens, Greece, in 1982. He graduated from the Automation Engineering Department of the Technological Education Institute (T.E.I.) of Piraeus in 2004 and received the Master of Research (M2R) in Control Theory from the University of Paul Sabatier (Toulouse III) in 2006, with scholarship from the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. He obtained the PhD degree with distinction in Control Theory with applications on mechanical systems from the university of Paris-Sud XI, France in 2010 with a scholarship from the Greek Scholarships Foundation. From June 2010 till September 2011, he was a researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and actually, he is working at the Laboratory of Signals and Systems (LSS) of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has been a visiting researcher for short and long term periods at the university of Groningen (the Netherlands), the Technical University of Catalunia (Spain), the university of Seville (Spain) and the Indian Institutes of Technology in Bombay and in Madras (India). His research interests are in the fields of nonlinear control and Lyapunov analysis with emphasis on telerobotics and (networks of) mechanical systems. He speaks three foreign languages (english, french, spanish) and he has been a member of the Greek national karate team.
Maria Angelopoulou (2006)
Maria E. Angelopoulou received the M.Eng. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, Greece, and the PhD degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, UK, in 2005 and 2008 respectively. Upon completion of her PhD, she became a postdoctoral research associate with the Circuits and Systems Research Group of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London, and worked on FPGA-based vision methods for real-time UAV navigation. In October 2009, she joined the Products Development Department of Intracom Defense Electronics, Athens, Greece, as an R&D engineer on hardware-based wireless multimedia communications. Since April 2011, she has been a researcher with the Communications and Signal Processing Research Group of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London, working on robotic vision and 3D surface reconstruction. During this period, she has also been a visiting researcher at the Centre of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Thessaloniki, Greece, for a few months. Her main interests are in computer vision, digital signal processing and real-time reconfigurable architectures. Apart from English and Greek, she also speaks German, French and Italian.
George B. Mertzios (2006)
George B. Mertzios during his school studies was awarded a number of Distinctions and Awards in National and International Mathematical Competitions and among them the Gold Medal in the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad in 1998. He studied for the first three years in the School of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences in the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), achieving an average grade of 9.5/10 (Excellent). During his studies in NTUA he has been awarded a number of scholarships and distinctions (Greek Scholarship Foundation, Technical Chamber of Greece etc.), and among them the Thomaidion Award that is conferred to the students who achieve the highest average grade in all semesters of their School. He continued and completed in 2005 his Studies in the Faculty of Mathematics in the Technische Universität of Munich with specialization in Computer Science achieving average grade 1.2/1 (Excellent). After his graduation from the Technische Universität of Munich, he served for 12 months in the Greek Navy. In 2009 he received his PhD in Computer Science from the RWTH Aachen University. The title of his PhD thesis was "Combinatorial Optimization and Recognition of Graph Classes with Applications to Related Models". During 2010-11 he worked as a postdoctorate researcher at the Department of Computer Science in Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and at the Caesarea Rothschild Institute for Computer Science in the University of Haifa, Israel. On September 2011 he became a Lecturer in Computer Science at Durham University, England. Since October 2015 he is a Senior Lecturer at Durham. His research areas include Efficient Graph Algorithms, Computational and Parameterized Complexity, Evolutionary Graph Theory, and Algorithmic Game Theory. http://community.dur.ac.uk/george.mertzios/
Dimitrios Mavroeidis (2006)
Dimitris Mavroeidis was awarded the Arnaoutis scholarship in 2006 towards receiving the MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 2007. He also holds a BSc in Informatics from the Athens University of Economics and Business. His working experience extends both at the industry and the academia. He has worked as a software developer, intelligent spoken dialogue systems designer and developer, database systems designer and developer and natural language processing engineer in companies like Xerox, Intrasoft and Omilia. He has also worked as a researcher for the Institute for Language and Speech Processing and co-founded the Cognitive Systems Research Institute (CSRI). He was a core member of the team developing META-SHARE, developed several machine translation systems, and implemented PRAXICON, an innovative semantic memory for artificial agents. He is now a Natural Language Processing Research Engineer as a member of the the DICE team at NCSR Demokritos. His research interests include -among others- machine translation, classification and domain adaptation.
Lina Vlachopoulou (2007)
Lina completed successfully her BSc studies in computer science obtaining a 2:1 grade, in the Piraeus Graduate School of Industrial Sciences. She had always wanted to attend a master and live in London. The combination of the high academic standards at the University College London and the “Arnaoutis Foundation” scholarship, which funded part of her studies, induced her to study at a master level. In UCL, she attended a MSC in Software Systems Engineering and graduated with a 2:1 grade in 2009. Part of the master took place at the London Business School which gave her a priceless insight of the trading mechanisms and tools. She started working as a Project Manager at Sungard (a Financial Services Provider) and later she moved to Citigroup in a PMO role in Fixed Income/ Rates. The last 4 years she has been working at Lloyds Banking Group as a Project Manager / Business Analyst and in October 2015 she moved to the Financial Markets Department where she is working on the Client Strategy and Business Development.
Georgios Giannelis (2008)
Georgios Giannelis completed his studies in Dentistry at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in June 2007. He graduated 2nd and was given a distinction from the Association of Graduates of the Dental School of AUTH. In June 2008, he began his postgraduate studies at the University of British Columbia-Faculty of Dentistry (Vancouver, Canada). He is attending the Combined MSc/Diploma in Periodontics. It is a three year program, which combines clinical practice in Periodontology and Implantology, research and teaching. He has published scientific articles in dental journals and he has participated in Greek and International Dental Student Congresses with oral presentations and posters.
Konstantinos Manolakis (2008)
Konstantinos Manolakis graduated from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2004. He holds a M.Sc. degree on telecommunication systems from the Technische Universität Berlin (2007) and he has recently submitted his Ph.D. thesis, which was supported by the Arnaoutis Foundation. Since 2006 he has worked as a research associate at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and currently he is with the TU Berlin. His research interests include wireless communications, especially multi-antenna transmission for next-generation cellular systems. His work has been published in several journals and conference proceedings.
Pavlos Antoniou (2008)
Pavlos Antoniou graduated as top student from the 2nd High School of Thessaloniki in 2001. He was admitted, 4th in the rank, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, having received a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. After graduating in 2006, he has worked as a systems engineer in Greece as well as a researcher at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China and at The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. In 2008 he enrolled in the MSc in Telecommunications programme at University College London as a scholar of the Arnaoutis Foundation. Since graduating with a distinction from UCL, he is working in the field of Information and Communications Technology while also acquiring a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
Paraskevi Papoula (2009)
Paraskevi Papoula is currently working as a Quant Engineer in swissQuant in the area of Portfolio Risk Management since January 2012, with focus in market and liquidity risk. She completed her MSc degree in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich on November 2011. She conducted her Master thesis in IBM Research Zurich on Signal Processing Algorithms for Localization and Time Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks. During her master studies she was a teacher assistant in Computer Engineering and worked as intern in Security Communications in Ascom for 7 months. She received her diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from National Technical University of Athens in 2009 with a major in Communications. She joined the family of General Arnaoutis Foundation Scholars in 2009 and enjoys their support ever since.
Maria Theodorou (2009)
Maria Theodorou is a senior researcher at the National Physical Laboratory in London, where she lives with her husband and her son. Previously, she worked in Accenture Management Consulting and then pursued doctoral and postdoctoral research at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. She holds a PhD in medical imaging from the University of London and an MSc in biomedical engineering from Imperial College London, funded by the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation during the academic year 2009/10.
Marina Georgia Arvanitidou (2009)
Marina Arvanitidou is lead R&D Engineer Artificial Intelligence at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik - the research and development centre for broadcast and media technology of the public service broadcasters in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Her focus is on leveraging machine learning technologies in the media sector, more specifically to implement data-driven processes in order to embrace AI-based innovation and digitize legacy processes in the newsroom and production workflows. Marina is excited about the opportunities that AI offers in every business domain and enthusiastic about bringing cutting-edge scientific results into real-world problem solutions.
Ioannis Paparrizos (2009)
Ioannis Paparrizos was admitted 5th in September of 2005 at the Computer Science Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and graduated with Highest Honors (Top 1%) in June 2009. At his B.Sc Thesis, the title of which is "Web mining algorithm based on structure, content and usage data of World Wide Web", he pursued novel research and proposed a new algorithm. During his studies he worked at the Network Operating Center of A.U.TH and as Microsoft Student Partner. As Founder and Chairman of A.U.TH ACM Student Chapter he co-organized the 8th International Student Spring Symposium in Thessaloniki. With the generous support of General Arnaoutis Foundation he will pursue M.Sc in Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL).
Orestis Kostakis (2009)
Orestis Kostakis graduated in 2004 from the 1st High School of Glyfada. He was admitted, 7th in rank, to the Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, University of Athens, were he received his BSc in February 2009 with a GPA of 8,65/10. His thesis' title was "Stackelberg strategies for selfish routing in general multicommodity networks". During the summer of 2009 he had the chance to work as a research assistant within the Laboratory of Theoretical Computer Science of the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT/TKK). Supported by a scholarship from the General Arnaoutis Foundation, Orestis will have the opportunity to pursue a MSc in Theoretical Computer Science for the next two years. His research interests include computational complexity & computer security. He speaks Greek, English, French and little Finnish & Turkish.
Nikolaos I. Lioulis (2009)
Nikos, currently holds the position of Strategic Advisor with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Previously he worked as a Strategy Consultant for Strategy& (previously known as Booz&Co.) based in Dubai. Before moving to the Midlle East he worked for 6 years in the Telco sector based in London. More specifically, he started his career with Vodafone Group and later moved to British Telecom as part of BT’s Fast Track Leadership Program which is designed to develop the next generation of leaders to take over senior magament positions. In terms of academic qualifications he holds an MEng Electrical & Computer Engineeering from NTUA and a MSc Communications and Signal Processing from Imperial College London.
Theodosios Tzoutzas (2010)
Theodosios has completed his Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) with the invaluable support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. During his academic training, he attained a comprehensive exposure in networking and communication, including topics on broadband and sensor networks. He was awarded with the International Master’s Student Award and the Graduate Research Studentship Award from the University of Waterloo. He has joined the Engineering Department of Avante Logixx Inc. in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and since September 2012 is an active member of the Hellenic Academy of York (HAY) in Ontario. Theodosios has received his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and his dissertation was a study on wireless ad-hoc sensor networks.
Aliki Perdikari (2010)
Αliki Perdikari graduated in April 2009 from the Department of Biology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens after completing her Bachelor Thesis with the title : "Diptera (Insects) Oogenesis as a Cytobiological Platform for the Illumination of the Apoptotic Potency of Chemotherapeutic Drugs". She continued her studies in a two - year Master program in Biology (with Major Cell Biology) in ETH Zurich with the support of the "General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. She graduated in May 2011 among the top students of her year and with an excellent grade. From January 2012 until today she is working towards a PhD in ETH Zurich,in the field of Nutrition Biology.
Konstantinos Chaloulos (2010)
Konstantinos' affinity for natural sciences was noticed from school years, when he won numerous awards in national and international mathematical competitions, including the silver medal in the Junior Balkan Mathematical Olympiad in 2001. His main education was completed in Athens College, where he was granted a full scholarship. After entering the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of National Technical University of Athens, he graduated in June 2010 with a GPA of 8.42/10. His work on his diploma thesis, entitled "Fuzzy Power Control of LMDS Networks" resulted into 2 journal and 2 conference publications. His dream of pursuing a master's degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) was realized with the support of the General Arnaoutis Foundation. In Mai 2013 he graduated from ETHZ with a GPA of 5.35/6, after successfully completing his obligatory internship at Albis Technologies in Zürich and his Master Thesis at ABB corporate research center in Dättwil. Since June 2013 Konstantinos has begun working as a network engineer at Switch in Zürich.
Apart from Greek, he fluently speaks English, German and French. Since 1992, his favorite hobby is basketball, practicing it as a member of basketball teams, while he recently found himself attracted to scuba diving, completing the education for open water diver.
Panoraia Manesi (2010)
Manesi Panoraia graduated in 2007 from the Department of Management Science and Technology of the Athens University of Economics and Business, with a specialisation in strategy and human resources. In 2005 she took part in Erasmus (an exchange students program) and she attended some courses in Universita' Carlo Cattaneo, Castellanza, Italy. Some of the projects that accomplished during her studies are: developing of an e-learning platform, co-leadership, the role and autonomy of subsidiary companies, Greece and European Union. In 2008 she started and developed her own company in the field of e-business services. During the last 2 years she has been working in a commercial company, in the National Telecommunications Company (OTE) and in a consultants company (internship). In the following academic year (2010-2011) she is going to follow a master course in the field of e-business technology at the Manchester University with the support of the Arnaoutis Foundation.
Ypatia Tsavliri(2010)
Ypatia Tsavliri graduated in 2010 from the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, with specialization in Software and Computer Systems. Supported by the scholarship of the General Arnaoutis Foundation, Ypatia had the opportunity to continue her studies at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), pursuing a Master in Computer Science. During her Master studies she focused on applied security and network systems and got the opportunity to work for her Thesis in the industry. After graduating, she was employed by Cisco Systems where she is currently working as a Software Test Engineer for networking products and applications. Based in the Innovation Center (Parc Scientifique) of EPFL, she has the opportunity not only to stay up to date with latest advances in research but also to enjoy a view on the beautiful Lac Léman that brings everyday to her mind the Aegean Sea.
Christina Morfopulou(2010)
Christina entered the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2003 and graduated in 2008 with a grade of 8.3/10. She was selected to conduct her diploma thesis at the Institute of Communications and Navigation of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) near Munich, where she worked for 6 months in the Free-Space Optical Communications group. In 2008-2009 she attended the MSc course of Communications and Signal Processing at Imperial College London and was awarded a distinction. In 2013 she completed her PhD degree in the Intelligent Systems and Networks group of Imperial College London, with the title “Queuing Analysis and Optimization Techniques for Energy Efficiency in Packet Networks” for which she received the support of the Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. In 2014 she joined Vodafone Group Services in Munich, Germany where she works as Solution Architect for Internet of Things Enterprise Applications. Since 2018 she is in parallel pursuing an MBA at the Hellenic Open University.
Theodora Apostolou(2010)
With the support of family and friends, Dora successfully graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of National Technical University of Athens (2004-2009). Then, she decided to enhance her knowledge in the Production and Energy Management sector by pursuing post-graduate studies in one of the most renowned technical universities. With the valuable contribution of Mrs Arnaouti, Dora will complete the interdisciplinary Master program, “Energy Science and Technology”, in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich by 2011. Having a clear view of her objectives and being highly motivated, Dora managed to acquire valuable experience by working in Schneider Electric as an intern and successfully completing the Master program with a Thesis on Power Electronics under the supervision of one of field leaders, ABB. Today Dora has joined the RF Department of HUBER+SUHNER in Herisau (Switzerland), where she provides technical support on customized solutions for companies around the world as an Application Engineer for Test & Measurement. Dora still hopes to return soon in Greece with the essential background to contribute to the technological progress of the country.
Pavlos Efstathopoulos(2011)
Pavlos was born in 1987 in Athens. His interest in the mathematical sciences was evident from an early age when he eagerly took part in many Greek mathematical contests. As a teenager he was awarded 3 years in a row the title of the Greek Chess Champion both individually and as a member of a team. In 2003 he was chosen as a member of the Olympic Computer Science team among many contestants. He graduated with an honors degree from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Kapodistrian University of Athens. During his studies he was asked by the National Technical University to establish the wireless network of the Civil Engineers Department. After completing his obligatory military duties he decided to continue his studies in the field of Computer Science abroad. In 2011 he was accepted in Bath University, in England to study Internet Systems and Security as a master’s degree. During the same period he was awarded a scholarship by the General Arnaoutis Foundation which played a key role to the continuation of his studies. Directly after finishing his MSc, he was employed by the Bath branch of ALTRAN UK as a software engineer. He is currently contributing in the creation of a programming language that is suitable for developing safety critical applications.
Thaer Alexandros Imseeh (2011)
In 2010, I completed my Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and Informatics at one Greece’s top universities: The University of Patras. Its long and varied curriculum has sculpted me to become a keen and devoted scientist and engineer. Through our five years studies we combined theoretical knowledge from lectures and tutorials and applied them in practice through laboratory work and research. Course-work ranged from innovative assignments to sophisticated multi-disciplinary projects. I became creative, resourceful and adaptable in formulating solutions to challenging problems. During my undergraduate studies, I found myself most interested in the application of technology at the molecular level and was fascinated by the possibilities that this would bring to the advancement of humanity in the fields of engineering as well as medicine. I have since developed a keen interest in Nanotechnology. The Gerneral Arnaoutis Foundation gave me the chance to attend my Masters in Nanotechnology (MSc) at University College London in the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The course is run in conjunction with the department of Physics and Astronomy and the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN), which is jointly owned and run by UCL and Imperial College London.
Katerina Marinaki (2011)
Katerina obtained her MSc in Bioengineering in 2013 from the University of Pennsylvania in Bionengineering, with the support of the Arnaoutis Foundation. While at UPenn she worked at the Computational Breast Imaging Group of the University of Pennsylvania Health System as a Research Assistant, conducting research in the area of breast cancer under Professor Despina Kontos. Post graduation, she joined IMS Health where she currently works as a consultant doing patient and physician level analyses supporting pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Prior to pursuing her graduate studies in the US, Katerina graduated from the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. Her main interest throughout her university years lay with biomedical applications of engineering. Her thesis, entitled "Implementation study of a monitoring system for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Diabetes types I&II" along with some biomedical courses, were the first steps that enticed her to further delve into the fascinating and rapidly evolving field of bioengineering. During her studies, she had been working at Miltech Hellas S.A. at first supporting the company's production and project databases and later on as a product manager for the company's Biomedical Instrumentation division.
Christina Tzanetopoulou (2011)
Christina Tzanetopoulou graduated from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens in July 2010. In 2014, she took her Master Degree on “Energy Science and Technology” by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). In the frame of her master thesis she evaluated electricity storage business cases in the research department of ALSTOM. As an intern at the ABB Corporate Research Center, she investigated the status of the European power markets. Christina is currently working on smart grids at the Swiss electricity distribution company, BKW. She joined the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation family on the prospect of her master studies and she has been greatfully enjoying its support ever since.
Pavlos Polianidis (2011)
Pavlos Polianidis was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1988 to greek parents and was raised in Kavala, Greece. He went to the first high school in Krinides, Kavalas between the years 2003 and 2006. In 2006 he was admitted at the Computer Science Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki from where he graduated with the Highest Honors (Top 1%) in 2011. In September, same year, he moved to Southampton, UK to do his master degree with in Web Technology. In his thesis with title: A provenance-aware crowd-sourced system for monitoring carbon emissions was rewarded he implemented a web based application to track the personal carbon emissions for the students of the University. He had the chance to work with an expert in the area, Luc Moreau who was co-chair of the W3C Provenance Working Group. In 2012, he graduated with a First Class Honors degree. Now he works as a JavaScript Engineer for a lead company in the area of football data compilation and analysis, in London. His expertise is around architecting highly scalable and performant Web systems that can deal with high volumes of real time data. Also among his other interests are modern programming languages, Reactive and Functional programming, machine learning, algorithms and data structures UX design and web technologies of the future.
Dimitris Christodoulou (2012)
Dimitris Christodoulou joined the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications University of Athens in September 2006, where he received his degree in September 2010 with an overall average of 8.3/10 (top 10%) . During the last semester of his studies, he studied at the University of Vienna, as a fellow of the European student exchange program Erasmus. His great interest in how Computer Science could be combined with biomedical research, led him in the field of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, where he made his first steps through his Thesis. He continued his studies at postgraduate level in the Graduate Program "Information Technologies in Medicine and Biology", University of Athens, acquiring his MSc Diploma in Bioinformatics with an Excellent overall grade of 9.6/10. Searching constantly for interesting subjects for study and research, he began his MSc Thesis in collaboration with the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA), entitled "Modeling the Dynamics of the IFN-β Enhanceosome Assembly at the Single and Multi cellular level for in-silico experimentation and prediction". In the spring of 2012, Dimitris was accepted as a doctoral student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), where with the support of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation will conduct his research in the field of Systems Biology and Bioinformatics.
Kostas Papagiannopoulos (2012)
I was born in 1988 in the city of Ioannina and since an early age, my parents helped me establish an interest in mathematics and history. However, I was soon drawn to Computer Science and in 2005 Ι was accepted in the school of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. The first years I spent in Athens gave me a very solid background in mathematics, physics and engineering. Still, Computer Science never ceased being my main focal point and I specialized in internet programming, microprocessors and operating systems. I graduated in 2011 with a thesis in Mobile Geo-blogging, which aimed at the development of an online, mobile social network in conjunction with geospatial data and GPS locations (in collaboration with IMIS, the Institute for the Management of Information Systems). Having graduated from NTUA, I sought to expand my knowledge base by studying Computer Security and in 2011 I was accepted in the Kerckhoff’s Institute, a Dutch collaboration between the universities of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Twente. Since 2013 I am a PhD student in the Digital Security department of Radboud University Nijmegen. My current research interests revolve around symmetric cryptography, high-speed software/hardware implementations, side-channel analysis and privacy.
Iason-Zacharias Apostolakis (2012)
Iason-Zacharias Apostolakis was born in Athens, in 1989. He graduated from the department of the Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens in October 2011 with a GPA of 8.78/10. Throughout his undergraduate studies his main academic interests were signal processing and computer vision and especially their use in biomedical applications. Thus, the completion of his undergraduate thesis titled “Noninvasive vascular elastography for the characterization of the carotid artery” conducted in collaboration with NTUA’s Biosim laboratory and University of Athens lecturer and prolific researcher Mrs. Golemati further ignited his interest towards biomedical engineering. In the spring of 2012 Iason was accepted in Columbia University in New York to continue his studies and research with the support of the General Arnaoutis Foundation in order to ultimately obtain the PhD Degree in Biomedical Engineering. Additionally, Iason will be the presenter of his first paper based on his studies on carotid artery displacement and strain maps accepted at the 2012 IEEE conference on Imaging Systems and Techniques at Manchester.
Kimon Fountoulakis (2013)
Kimon graduated in 2009 from the Management Science and Technology Department of the Athens University of Economics and Business. During the year 2009/2010 he completed with distinction the MSc in Operational Research with Computational Optimization at the School of Mathematics, Edinburgh University. In 2010/2011, Kimon worked as a tutor at the Imperial College London and was involved with two courses: "Algorithms for Optimal Decisions" and "Operations Research". In 2011 he started his PhD at the School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh. His PhD is about the development of theory and the design and implementation of efficient algorithms for Machine Learning and Signal Processing applications. As of May 2015 Kimon will be a postdoctoral fellow at the International Computer Science Institute of University of California Berkeley where he will study randomized algorithms for optimization.
Chris Pappas (2013)
Chris Pappas was born in 1989 in Athens and grew up in Ioannina. He graduated from the Electrical & Computer Engineering department of the National Technical University of Athens in July 2012 with a GPA of 8.50/10. In 2006 he co-founded a greek social network – named “Zino” – and participated in the development until 2010. In his undergraduate studies, he specialized in Computer Science and wrote his diploma thesis on “Search and Retrieval of Multimodal, Audiovisual Content”, under the supervision of Prof. Symeon Papavassiliou. After graduation, he worked as a research assistant in the Network Management and Optimal Design Laboratory until the spring of 2013. In June 2013, he started his PhD studies in the Network Security Group of ETH Zurich, with the support of the “Arnaoutis Foundation”. His research interests lie in the area of network architecture and network accountability/privacy.
Ilias Pagkalos (2013)Ilias was born in Thessaloniki in 1989. He graduated from the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Democritus University of Thrace in July 2011. He graduated 2nd in this ceremony and he was in the 10% of the graduates of all ceremonies for the year 2011. In 2011-2012 he attended the MSc in Analogue and Digital Integrated Circuit Design in the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London. Thanks to the support from the Arnaoutis Foundation from 2012 to 2016 he worked towards his PhD under the supervision of Prof Drakakis in the Bio-inspired VLSI Circuits and Systems group of the department of Bioengineering of Imperial College London. His research focused on the design, manufacturing and testing of an electro-chemical device to be used for monitoring of patients suffering a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). In 2017 he transitioned from the wonderful world of academia to consulting industry steering his career more towards Artificial Intelligence. Currently holds a Data Science Consultant position at Accenture.
Vasilios Mavroudis (2014)Vasilios graduated at the top of his class in the Applied Informatics Department of the University of Macedonia in November 2012 with a GPA of 8.51/10. In addition, he attended Technical University of Denmark (formerly IHK) in August 2011, where he excelled in the “Security in IT Systems” course finishing with a grade of 10/12. From May 2013, Vasilios has been a research assistant in “Centre for Research & Technology, Hellas” (CERTH), where he participated in research projects funded by the European Union. Previously, he worked in the “Global Technology Security” department of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany from March to August 2012. In September 2014, he began his MSc on Information Security in the University College London (UCL), with the support of the “General Arnaoutis Charitable Foundation”. He is currently pursuing his PhD in computer science in the Information Security Group at UCL. His research interests include Network & System Security and he enjoys applying machine learning techniques to solve problems in the aforementioned areas.
Dimitris Koimtzoglou (2014)Dimitris Koimtzoglou was born and raised in Veria of Imathia. He graduated with distinction from the 4th High School of Veria and studied at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He followed the Electrical Energy specialization and his dissertation topic was entitled ‘’Analytical analysis and simulation of heat transfer in a solid conductor cable‘’ which was presented at the 5th Conference of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Xanthi, 2012. As a graduated Electrical Engineer he realized that lifelong learning is crucial for both the professional and personal life of an Engineer and he continued his studies with seminars in Health Informatics and Signal Processing. Dimitris, with the valuable help of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, will continue his post-graduate studies in Biomedical Engineering in KU Leuven in the September of 2013. His further desire is to continue as a PhD researcher.
Dimitrα Pouli (2014)Dimitra is a Medical School graduate that joined the Optical Diagnostics for Diseased and Engineered Tissues Group of the Biomedical Engineering Dept in Tufts University as a PhD student in 2012. She received her MD with honors from the University Of Athens School Of Medicine in 2011. She is interested in optical diagnostics and translational research for practical clinical implementation. Her current research involves the utilisation of Laser Scanning Fluorescence Microscopy and Image Analysis Algorithms to non-invasively investigate cancerous transformation and disease detection in human tissues.
Nikos Bountas (2014)Nikos was born in Athens in 1989 and being a diligent student, he completed his undergraduate studies at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in less than five years. He then graduated the Master’s Program "Science and Technology of Water Resources" at the same university with a GPA of 9.58/10. In September 2013 he createdwith two friends of his the site www.mathaidgreece.com, which provides tutorial help in mathematics for free, making education accessible to all students regardless of their economic status. During the same year, he worked in the advisory department of Ernst & Young, where he was exposed to the working routine of a multinational enterprise. In September 2014 he began his studies in the MS Sustainable Design and Construction of Stanford University, with the support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. His career goal is to establish a construction company in his home country which will specialize in executing, and consulting on, design of sustainable infrastructures and energy management.
Alkistis Valouktsi (2014)Alkistis Valouktsi graduated with distinction from the 1st Lyceum of Chortiatis in Thessaloniki. She completed her undergraduate studies in the department of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with specialisation on “Information and Communication Technologies in Education” in 2012 with grade 7.86/10. Her bachelor thesis titled “Green Computing and practices of ICT management in schools” was rated as Excellent-10. In September 2014 she started her postgraduate studies in the University of Edinburgh under the title “Msc Design Informatics”, with the support of Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. In the past, she has worked for the design and development of web information systems for the private sector as well as in cooperation with the IT Center of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She speaks Greek, Bulgarian and English at a proficient level and German at a good level. Her research interests include Human Computer Interaction, Web Technologies and Applications, User Interface Design and Software Engineering.
Vasileios Georgiou-Sarlikiotis (2015)Vasileios graduated from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2011, with a focus on Electronic and Computer Engineering. During his studies, he was involved in a variety of internal projects, including the modernization of the Department's wireless infrastructure. In 2007 he was one of the founding members of P.A.N.D.O.R.A. (Program for the Advancement of Non Directed Operating Robotic Agents) Robotics team. P.A.N.D.O.R.A., focused on developing a robotic platform capable of searching for survivors in case of natural disasters, has managed to rank amongst the 10 best teams worldwide during its participation in the international RoboCup competitions. His involvement in the project resulted in 2 awards ("Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Innovation Award" for best student participation in international competitions, and "Best Paper-Demo Session") and 3 conference publications (in Suzhou of China, Athens and Thessaloniki). In 2009 he completed his internship, funded by DAAD, in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the FernUniversität in Hagen, based on Multi-Criteria Routing Algorithms. In 2011, he attended a specialized course on the Deployment of Wireless Infrastucture in Catastrophe Areas at Aalborg University in Denmark. His dissertation was based on the design and implementation of a localization algorithm based on RFID technology for the navigation of robotic vehicles. In 2012 he completed his military duties in the 32nd Special Forces Marine Brigade in Volos. During the same year, Vasileios was awarded 2 first-place awards in the 1st International Conference on Microtechnology, held at IMTEK (Institute für Mikrosystemtechnik) Freiburg. With the support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, Vasileios currently pursues a Master in Microsystems Engineering in the Department of Microsystems Engineering at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, while simultaneously working as a Research Assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Solid State Physics.
Gersimos Doris (2015)Gerasimos was born in 1990 in Thessaloniki. He completed his undergraduate studies obtaining an MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Democritus University of Thrace, where his main interest was the field of energy sustainability, especially renewables and their integration to the grid. Being an active IEEE and IEEE Power & Energy Society member since 2013, and member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET-UK), he attends annually at conferences internationally pursuing up-to- date knowledge in his relevant sector. Noteworthy project of his was the “Design and cost of energy systems of a hybrid house” with 4M’s and Daikin’s major cooperation, whereas his dissertation “Application of dynamic programming in the expansion of natural gas networks” was in association with the Gas Supply Company of Thessaloniki and contributed in the company’s future plans for local network expansion. Between 2013 and 2014, he worked for Sunera North Ltd, Daikin Ltd and Energyland, companies based in the Northern part of Greece and related with solar farms, heat pumps and pellet-natural gas installations, respectively. In 2014/15 he fulfilled his military obligations being a Network Infrastructure Engineer at the Communication and Information Systems department of NATO in Greece, optimizing his skills as network administrator and software engineer. He was assigned to be the foreman of a 6-member project team, of rebuilding the old network of classified computers. In 2016, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh completing an MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems, having as companion the support of General Arnaoutis Foundation. Gaining in-depth knowledge on energy sustainability, he worked his thesis on the provision of grid ancillary services by large Electric Vehicle parking/charging stations, extrapolating to future application in airports. He worked for WPO - Wind Prospect Operations providing asset management on windfarms (Enercon, Siemens, Vestas, Nordex, Acciona, Senvion) ensuring their optimal operation, while supporting them technically and contractually. He has been honoured to represent the School of Engineering alumni achievements at the official prospectus of MSc Taught Degree Courses of the University of Edinburgh website (being displayed on top of a wind turbine). He is currently working for WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff as a Power Systems Engineer. He speaks English, German and Greek. Holding a Special degree in Musical Harmony with distinction, his main interests are playing the piano (professionally), saxophone and accordion, as well as outdoor activities like biking, different kinds of team sports and volunteering (children with Special Needs, food bank, Cancer Research UK etc).
Stylianos Moschoglou (2015)Stylianos was born and raised in Kilkis. He graduated from the 1st Lyceum of Kilkis in 2008, achieving the highest grade in the prefecture. In 2007, he was a finalist in the national competition “Lysias”. In 2008, he won the bronze medal in the National Mathematical Olympiad and he was a member of the Greek Mathematics Team in the Mediterranean Mathematics Contest. In the same year, he created a webpage dedicated to mathematics, www.mathematica.gr, which is now the largest in Greece and one of the largest world-wide. In 2011, while an undergraduate student at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, under the supervision of the then President of the School, Prof. Pericles Mitkas, he organised and presented a series of lectures dedicated to Internet Technologies and Trends, where over 500 students attended (webseminars.ee.auth.gr). In 2013, he was awarded together with his team the 3rd prize in the European Innovation Competition “E-nnovation 2013” for their project “Pick-Me” (www.pick-me.gr). In the same year, he was offered an honourary invitation to the European Parliament from the Member of European Parliament (MEP) Dr. Ioannis A. Tsoukalas in order to present his project. In 2014, he was invited to the Greek Economic Forum which took place in the European Parliament, in order to present his views about the young entrepreneurship in front of MPs of Greece, MEPs and Economists. In the same year, he was an organising member at “Programming Contests”, an initiative with main objective to foster programming techniques and skills among undergraduate and graduate students (contests.ee.auth.gr). He is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and he is a member of the Computational Intelligence Society. He has served as a board member of the IEEE student branch of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and he was elected as vice-president of the branch in 2013. In 2013, he represented the student branch in the Panhellenic Student Branches Congress, which took place in Nicosia, Cyprus. He graduated in 2014 with GPA 8.34/10.00, ranked 5th out of 247 students. From October 2015 he will be undertaking a master’s degree in Computing (with specialisation in Artificial Intelligence) at Imperial College London with the support of the General Arnaoutis Foundation. In his free time he engages in social services and he is a member of the Rotary’s youth programme Rotaract. Since 2013, he is responsible for the management of the 2484 Rotaract District website (www.rotaractdistrict2484.org). He is a volunteer in the causes of the Hellenic Mathematical Society and he enjoys coding, reading historical and philosophical books and playing the piano.
Christos Bampis (2015)Christos was born in 1991 in Athens. He completed his undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the National and Technical University of Athens, with an emphasis on computer vision and image processing with a GPA of 9.42/10.00. In his master thesis, he studied and developed new graph clustering techniques for image segmentation. Since August 2014, he has started his PhD research in the University of Texas at Austin in the Laboratory of Image & Video Engineering (LIVE) where he works on perceptual image and video quality assessment, with the support of the General Michael Arnaoytis Foundation. During the summer of 2015, he worked at Intel Labs in Silicon Valley for developing novel stereo vision algorithms. In his free time, he enjoys practicing martial arts, listening to music, reading and writing poetry.
Christos Sakaridis (2015)Christos was born in Athens in 1991. He is a PhD candidate at Computer Vision Lab, ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Luc Van Gool, where he works with Dr. Dengxin Dai on visual recognition under adverse conditions such as fog and night in the context of autonomous cars, having developed state-of-the-art methods for semantic image segmentation adapted to such domains. Before his doctoral studies, Christos obtained the MSc in Computer Science from ETH Zurich in 2016 with a specialization in Visual Computing and a grade of 5.59/6 (top 18%). In the second year of his Master studies (2015-2016), he received the valuable support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation and conducted his Master thesis on shape deformation at the Computer Graphics Lab of ETH. Previously, he studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), obtaining his Diploma in 2014 with a grade of 9.06/10 (honors, top 5%). In his Diploma thesis, which was supervised by Prof. Petros Maragos and Prof. Kimon Drakopoulos, he developed a novel theoretical method to detect coherent clusters in images defined on arbitrary graphs by extending the framework of active contours to this more general type of data. He attended Pierce College, the high school of the American College of Greece, from which he graduated first in rank in 2009, honored as Valedictorian. In 2008, he participated in the Global Young Leaders Conference held in Washington DC and New York, taking part in simulations of global political institutions such as the UN Global Summit. His main research areas are Computer Vision and Machine Learning, while he also draws inspiration from the general mathematical aspects of Signal Processing. He has authored 8 scientific publications, all of which have been published at top-tier Computer Vision conferences and journals, including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, IJCV and SIIMS. He has co-organized the Vision for All Seasons workshop held in conjunction with the CVPR conference in 2019 and 2020. He serves as a reviewer for the journals IJCV and IEEE TIP. He is keen on sports, in particular water polo, football, basketball and table tennis. He reads history, mythology and geography. He plays the baglamas and is an amateur singer.
Fanis Vlachos (2016)Fanis was born in 1993 in Athens. In 2011, he was accepted (he had the second highest grade) in the Physics department of University of Patras where he graduated with 8.56/10. During the last year of his studies he did an internship at the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics of the National Research Center “Demokritos”. His responsibilities were to run the simulation softwares of the neutrino detectors and to compare their results, which lead to a publication at the scientific journal EPJ Web of Conferences. Thanks to the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, he will continue his studies by attending the postgraduate course Sensor and Imaging Systems which is jointly awarded by University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh. He’s been a volunteer for the last 2 years in the environmental organization “Archelon” and in his free time he enjoys doing sports, practicing martial arts and playing chess.
Evgenia Noidou (2016)Evgenia was born in Thessaloniki and completed her undergraduate studies in Applied Informatics at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. Later on, she completed her Master of Science in Software Development at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland and she worked the last few years as a developer in Glasgow enjoying the braw beauty of the Scottish landscapes. Part of these experiences is attributed to The “General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation” scholarship that allowed her to make her dreams come true to study and live in Scotland!
Panagiotis Nikoloutsopoulos (2016)Panagiotis was born in Patras in 1991 and grew up in Thessaloniki. He completed his studies on Computer Science at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for his Bachelor's and, with the help of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for his Master's, where he majored in Theoretical Computer Science. Throughout his studies, he worked at private Informatics companies, at the university's Network Operations Center and at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, where he developed software for the management of the Council's personnel. He also served as a tutor for three undergraduate courses of the University of Edinburgh's Computer Science program. He was an active volunteer of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) during his stay in Thessaloniki as well as abroad. He has since then joined the Software Engineering industry working as a back-end developer at travel sector companies Amadeus and recently Booking.com in the Netherlands.
Theofanis Sofianopoulos (2016)Fanis was born in Athens in 1990. In 2009 he entered the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. During his studies, he specialized in Electric Power Systems. During his thesis, under the guidance of professor Dr. Stavros Papathanassiou, he created an innovative method that allows the effective and precise control of Photovoltaic Units, which enables their integration in Electric Power Systems. This resulted in an article entitled ‘’ Active Power Control in PV Systems Using a Curve Fitting Algorithm Based on the Single-Diode Model’’, which was written in cooperation with professor Dr. Stavros Papathanassiou and Phd student Mr. Efstratios Batzelis and was presented in the annual European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (EU PVSEC) which took place in Hamburg, Germany in October 2015. In parallel with his undergraduate studies, he was awarded the ‘’Angelopoulos-Clinton fellowship’’ for 2015. In cooperation with two other students form the faculty of Chemical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, they were members of the Greek delegation in the annual ‘’Clinton Global Initiative University’’ that took place in Miami of the United States of America. There, they presented their idea that revolved around creating an interactive scientific platform that would enable the presentation of virtual experiments to High School students. This platform is currently under construction. His passion for Renewable Energy Sources led in September of 2015 in the Wind Energy Engineering MSc at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). With the invaluable assistance of the General Michael Arnaoutis foundation, he is currently in the second year of his studies, having thus far presented academic excellence that places him among the top 5% of his class. During his free time he practices sports, with his great passion being basketball and sailing.
Thodoris Voutsikakis (2016)Thodoris Voutsikakis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1988. He completed his studies on classical singing with honors and awarded with special mention (Monody in the class of Thalia Mavridou, Philippos Nakas Conservatory). He has also graduated from the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki receiving a scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation ( IKY). He has attended courses on lyric drama, acting (with Christos Papastergiou at the theatre workshop “Metamorfoseis”) and musical performance (with Sia Koskina – PMTP method). At the age of 23 it was the first time he was introduced as a singer and almost immediately he began his personal concerts both in Greece and abroad. He has worked alongside many artists like Dulce Pontes, Luis Borda, Stavros Xarchakos, Christos Leontis, Lina Nikolakopoulou and Dimitris Maramis and performed in productions held by the Athens Concert Hall, Athens State Orchestra, Thessaloniki Concert Hall, the National Theatre of Northern Greece etc. He had the leading role at the jukebox musical “Dorian Gray” by Ada Tsesmeli – Edwards. He also performed the role of the “Μusician” at a children’s musical called “Silence, The King is Listening” by N.Kypourgos and Th. Mosxopoulos, as well as the role of “Aristotle” at the rock opera “Alexander the Great. The Rock Opera” by Konstantinos Athirides. His debut album was released in 2014 titled “Emotional age” which was considered to be one of the best albums for the same year. The music for this album was composed by Dimitris Maramis and the lyrics were derived from poems by M. Gkana, S. Trivizas, N. Lapathioti and N. A. Aslanoglou. He has also participated in various music albums by distinguished artists. Two examples are the songs “Una Pastora” which was recorded for the internationally released album “Aleli” by Luis Borda and Georgia Velivasaki and “Tichero Asteri” ( Lucky Star) released by Feelgood Records for the radio station “Melodia” . During his military service he performed with the Military band of Athens at the Presidential Palace at the annual event celebrating Democracy. In 2016 Thodoris Voutsikakis made it to the list of the best young Greek artists and was regarded as one of the 30 most promising young Greeks in every carrer field.
Lazaros Lazaridis (2017)Lazaros was born in Ptolemaida, in 1992. As a student he won the first prize at DARTaninan panhellinic contest about Digital Security for teenagers between 16-18 held by the Ministry of Finance. In 2010, he entered the Faculty of Production and Management Engineering of Demokritus University of Thrace. During his studies, he volunteered in Arcturos, a non-profit organization which aims to prevent the wildlife and the natural environment in Greece. His contribution was a general purpose database to satisfy the needs of the organization as their old one was out-dated. At his B.Sc. Thesis he created an application about Managing the Functionality of Waiting Queues. The application benefits both the clients and the administrators of the waiting queues. The way this is done, is by helping the administrator evaluate in real-time the servers of the queue whilst in the same time it notifies the clients with the exact time that they will be served freeing that way their waiting time and making it possible for them to utilize it. It could prove really helpful if it is implemented in banks or public services. In 2015, he graduated with GPA 8.50/10 scoring top 2% of his class. Since September 2016, he continues his studies as a Master's Student at TU Delft in the Embedded Systems Faculty having thus far presented academic excellence. During his studies in the Netherlands he along with two of his colleagues founded a High-Tech start-up that aims to create a pet friendly robot. The purpose of this robot will be to occupy pets and document their behavior. The technological challenge of this matter is to address the SLAM (Simultaneous Location and Mapping) problem. He will hopefully graduate in 2018 having the honor to be a General Michael Arnaoutis scholar. During his free time he enjoys doing sports, travelling and watching football.
Nikiforos Botis (2017)Nikiforos was born in Athens in 1995. After graduating high-school with honors (19.3/20) in 2013, he was admitted, 6th in the rank, in the Department of Management Science and Technology (DMST) of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). During the four years of his studies at the Greek university, he was a very active student by participating in multiple activities in parallel with his studies, both local and European. Indicatively, Nikiforos was invited to be part of the InnoJam++, a three-day Hackathon co-organized by SAP and Volkswagen which took place at Hanover in 2016, following his excellence (top 2.5% of the class) in the corresponding labs (SAP ERP). Furthermore, Nikiforos is very interested in exploring new business ideas and in 2016 he participated at CruiseInn, an entrepreneurial competition in which his team managed to be placed first and win a cash prize for setting up the start-up company. Moreover, he spent a semester of his undergraduate studies at the University College London (UCL) by getting a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) through the Erasmus program. In London, he had the opportunity of being part of a world-class university, where he successfully completed the courses he had chosen with an average of first-class honors (70%). Besides his studies, Nikiforos was part of two research groups in the Greek university, the Organizational Information Systems (OIS) and the Software Engineering and Security (SENSE) in which he conducted some research projects on topics related to Information Systems and Software Engineering. In his last year at AUEB, Nikiforos was an intern at the Dutch consulting company Software Improvement Group where he gained valuable experience on the IT research field. Having graduated the Greek university with honors (GPA: 9/10, scoring at the top 2% of his class), he joined the Imperial College London to continue his studies by pursuing a Master’s degree in Computing Science, which was successfully completed (overall grade: first-class honors) a year later (2018). Nikiforos is grateful to the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation for its invaluable support that enabled him to fund part of the degree’s fees. Having been in academia for five years in a row, Nikiforos decided to move to the industry by undertaking a role (Technical Researcher) in Amazon Web Services, the leading cloud service provider. In his free time, Nikiforos enjoys travelling, volunteering, playing football and basketball and reading books.
Vasilis Papastefanopoulos (2017)Vasilis was born in Patras in 1990. In 2014, he was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of the University of Patras where he specialised in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics developing a strong interest in the field of Machine Learning. Under the supervision of Professor Sotiris Kotsiantis he completed his BSc thesis “Credit Scoring Using Machine Learning”, where he examined the applicability of Machine Learning methods to the process of Credit Scoring, a method widely used by financial institutions worldwide for creditworthiness assessment. As a member of the Department’s Machine Learning Group (http://ml.math.upatras.gr/) and in collaboration with Professor Kotsiantis and Phd Student Stamatis Karlos he conducted further research on the same topic, the outcome whereof was summarised in the scientific paper: “Using Semi-Supervised Learning Methods for Credit Score Problem”. The paper was accepted for publication and presented at the 21st International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES2017 – CIMA2017) held in Marseille, France. He graduated in 2017 with an overall GPA of 8.69/10, ranked 3 rd out of 372 students (top 1% of his class). He also holds a BA in Education from the same University which he received in 2012. In September 2017, he started his Machine Learning MSc at University College London (UCL) with the support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation.
Vasileios Lefkopoulos (2017)Vasilis was born in Thessaloniki in 1993 and graduated from the 15th General Lyceum of Thessaloniki in 2011. At the Panhellenic Examinations of 2011 he achieved the highest grade in his school (19.6/20), for which he was awarded a scholarship by EFG Eurobank Ergasias SA, and was admitted to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh). During his studies, he chose the specialization of Electronic and Computer Engineering, focusing on the field Automatic Control. In this field, under the supervision of Professor George Rovithakis and in cooperation with the German automotive company Continental, he completed his Diploma thesis and graduated in 2017 with GPA 8.9/10 at the top 2% of his class. In September 2017, with the financial help of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, he began his postgraduate studies at the Master in Robotics, Systems and Control programme of ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), in Switzerland. In his free time, he particularly enjoys music and the cinema.
Pantelis Zafeiropoulos (2018)Pantelis was born in Alexandria of Imathia in 1993. He completed his high school education at the 2nd General Lyceum of Alexandria and succeeded his goal in the Panhellenic Examinations. As a result, he was admitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. From the early beginning of his studies, he joined the RAPPEL team of the Informatics Lab of the department where he cooperated with colleagues to build the hardware as well as the software of a LEGO robot that functioned autonomously. In the 3rd year of his studies he focused in the field of Machine Elements and as a result he became a member of the advisors team which advised students with their Machine Elements assignments, solved queries and delivered lectures. After that, he took part in the Erasmus Placement program by which he worked as an intern at Silberform A.G. in Stuttgart where he contributed to the company’s automotive design projects. After his return back to Thessaloniki, he concentrated his interest at the field of Control Systems as he chose to analyze dynamically the Stewart Platform robotic mechanism and to create an efficient control system for the platform’s proper dynamic behavior. His two thesis supervisors were professors S. Natsiavas and P. Seferlis. In July 2017 he graduated with 8.59/10 at the top 10% of his class while three months after he drafted in the Greek Army to serve his country. In September of 2018, he was funded by the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation to study the postgraduate programme MSc Control Systems at the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of Imperial College London.
Manos Giannakakis (2018)Manos was born in Athens in 1996. In 2014 he graduated from Ionios school and was admitted to the department of mathematics at the university of Athens. During his undergraduate studies he specialized in computational mathematics and theoretical computer science. In addition to his studies, he participated in research under the supervision of Professor Leftheris Kirousis, studying constraint satisfaction problems. After his graduation in 2018 he worked at the department of Neuroscience of the university of Newcastle, under the supervision of Professor Marcus Kaiser, on a project that aimed to computationally simulate the effects of electrical stimulation on the brains of epileptic patients. In 2018, with the help of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation he began his postgraduate studies in Artificial Intelligence at the university of Edinburgh. In his free time he enjoys reading literature and Philosophy.
Marikita Marinaki (2018)Maria (Marikita), studied Chemical Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, something that was her dream since a very young age. During her studies, she devoted her time in research in the field of Biomedical Engineering, investigating Alzheimer’s disease and Acute Pulmonary Damage, at AUTH and the University of Illinois at Chicago equivalently. Her research sparked an interest for the healthcare system as a whole; It was then when she began contemplating about the effective use of history, which has been collected as data, to improve research in healthcare and to make better service decisions, in order to minimize costs and to improve the effective treatment of patients. This is why she chose to join the Master of Engineering Program at UC Berkeley, in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Currently, she is trying to extract meaningful results from research data, with the use of Machine Learning algorithms, in order to effectively prevent the development of obesity and diabetes in people that have a genetic predisposition to those illnesses.
Mariela Papadaki (2019)Maria Elpida was born in Athens in 1995. Graduating from high school in 2013 summa cum laude, she received an award and a distinction for an overall score of 19,2. She was then admitted into the Department of Management Science and Technology 11th in rank. During her studies she was a part of various student volunteer organizations, most prominently in the organizational committee of the Department of Management Science 12th annual conference, events supported by the volunteer platform GloVo as well as Job Fair Athens, a student initiative which aims to bridge the gap between university and the job market, thus tackling youth unemployment. During her second year in university, she got an award for a project in Analysis & Design of Information Systems, sparking her interest in the field of Business Intelligence. In her third year, she spent a semester abroad, studying in the Hague, Netherlands by getting a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation. During her final year, she was given funding by the National Strategic Reference Framework in order to do an internship at the up and coming Greek start-up BEAT-Taxibeat LTD, where she worked in the department of Business Intelligence. After graduating with a score of 8,41 from the Athens University of Economics and Business, she took a job as a Data Analyst at the Greek company Byte Computer, where she dealt with requirements regarding data analysis and report authoring, while also conducting trainings in Business Intelligence. Her desire to grow and improve her skills in her chosen field, led her to apply for a Master’s at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), studying Business Information Management. RSM is at the top 1% of business schools worldwide with a Triple Crown Accreditation with regards to the quality of studies. Maria Elpida is grateful to the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation for its valuable support, since the funding provided by the Foundation will help her cover part of the cost of her studies in Rotterdam.
Panagiotis Pachymanolis (2019)Panagiotis-Panteleimon Pachymanolis was born on Samos in 1995. He was admitted, 4th in rank, to the Department of Information & Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean. He received his BSc in November 2018 with a graduating mark of 8,15/10, placing him amongst the top 5% of his class. During his studies, he specialized in Information and Communication Systems Security and Privacy and Communication Systems and Networks. His bachelor’s thesis entitled “Implementation of a behavioral profile model to detect compromised accounts on social networks. A case study on Facebook.” was rated as Excellent and given a mark of 10/10. In 2019 he completed his military duties in the 79th National Guard Higher Command on Samos. The same year, he will begin his postgraduate studies in Cybersecurity at University of Twente, Netherlands with the help and financial support of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. During his free time he enjoys playing basketball, running and watching football.
Konstantinos Zisis (2019)Konstantinos was born in Athens in November 1993 and grew up in Ioannina. In 2011 he graduated from the 4th General Lyceum of Ioannina, and was admitted to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During his undergraduate studies he specialized in Electronics and Computer Systems with a particular emphasis on Automatic Control. As a student he participated in P.A.N.D.O.R.A. robotics team, a student team that aims in the development of an autonomous robotic UGV for rescue applications. In 2015, P.A.N.D.O.R.A participated in the RoboCup Rescue competition which was held in Hefei, China and was awarded the 2nd place in Autonomy class. Under the supervision of Professor George Rovithakis, he completed his Diploma Thesis titled “Nonlinear System Identification via Prescribed Performance Control”, which is now under review for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control - one of the most influential journals in the field of Automatic Control. In September 2019, under the financial support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation he will start his Master’s program in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology offered by ETH Zurich in Switzerland. In his free time, he enjoys cinema, board games as well as hiking.
Stefanos Koufidis (2020)Stefanos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1995 and he graduated from Anatolia College in 2013 with a total mark of 19.3 “Excellent”. He was then admitted, through the panhellenic exams, to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki Faculty of Engineering. During the third year of his studies, he joined the telecommunications division where he worked on his diploma thesis “Theoretical study of topological chiral metamaterials with hyperbolic dispersion”, under the supervision of Professor Nikolaos V. Kantartzis. He received his engineering degree with a total mark of 8.51 “Excellent”, which placed him at the top 5% of his fellow graduates. Shortly after, he joined the Hellenic Armed Forces where he served as research and informatics corps private of the C’ Army Corps. In the following year, he studied the MSc in Optics and Photonics at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, graduating in 2021 with an overall mark of 73.5% “Distinction”. He is currently a PhD student at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London doing research on theoretical optics under the supervision of Professor Martin W. McCall. He is grateful to the “General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation” for its trust and financial support for his MSc studies. He is a member of the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE).
Antonios Kekempanos (2020)Antonios was born in Athens in 1994 and grew up in N.Artaki, Evia where he graduated from the General Lyceum in 2012. His performance in Pan-Hellenic Examinations in 2012 allowed him to be admitted to School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). During his undergraduate studies he chose to specialize in Digital-Embedded Systems, as he was passionate about building and testing solutions for everyday life problems using prototyping platforms, such as Arduino. He also became a member of Prom Racing NTUA FSAE Team as an Electronics Engineer mainly responsible for the development and operation of the vehicle's data acquisition system. Formula SAE is an international student competition where student teams design, build, test and race a rule-compliant formula-like vehicle. Subsequently, he completed his diploma thesis titled “ECG analysis in IoT embedded applications with Real-time Operating Systems (RTOS)” under the supervision of professor Dimitrios Soudris, director of the Microprocessors and Digital Systems Lab (MicroLab) at ECE NTUA, and graduated with GPA 9.22/10. In 2018 he completed his military duties in Hellenic Navy as member of networks management team due to his related diploma. In February 2019, he started working as a Junior Embedded Software Engineer at Intracom Telecom in Athens, a global telecommunication systems and solutions vendor. In September 2020, with the financial help of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, he began his Master studies in Embedded Systems at Eindhoven University of Technology.
Dimitrios Antoniadis (2020)Dimitrios Antoniadis was born in Marousi, Athens, in November, 1996. As a high school student, he succeeded 5 times in the National Mathematics Competition “Thales”, which was held by the Hellenic Mathematical Society, and participated 5 times in the National Mathematics Competition “Euclid”. In 2014, he graduated first in his class from Pallatideio Lyceum of Sidirokastro scoring 19159 points in the Panhellenic Examinations and he was admitted to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Because of his achievement, he won an award by Eurobank. In 2017, alongside his studies, Dimitrios joined the Greek Army and participated in the National Military Badminton Championship winning a gold and a bronze medal. In 2020, he graduated with an overall score of 8,15. His thesis title was “A Mixed Signal Design of a Scalable Reconfigurable Neuromorphic Core” and his thesis supervisor was Prof. Hatzopoulos Alkiviadis. In the context of the agreement between A.U.TH. and Europractice and while he was studying for his thesis, he received a plethora of certificates regarding the usage of Cadence Integrated Circuit Design tools. In October, 2020, he will attend MSc Programme “Analogue and Digital Integrated Circuit Design” at Imperial College London with the aid of “the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation”. In his free time, he enjoys playing football. Additionally, he is a member of Badminton Team Kastro and he has won 3 bronze medals in the National Badminton Team Championship.
Pavlos Frangogiannis (2020)Pavlos Frangogiannis was born in Chania in 1994. In 2012 he graduated from the 4th General High School of Chania and was admitted to the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. In 2016 he had the opportunity to spend one semester of his studies abroad, participating in the Erasmus program. He attended Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, receiving a scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation. He graduated from NTUA in 2019 with a graduation grade of 8.24 / 10, while fulfilling his military service in the Hellenic Navy at the Salamis Naval Base during the last year of his studies. His dissertation entitled "DICOM medical imaging data in 3D in the context of medical teleconferences on the web browser" was rated "Excellent" and received a grade of 10 / 10. From February 2019 to August 2020 he worked at Incelligent as a Software Engineer developing Big Data Predictive Analytics platforms. At the same time, he co-authored the paper "Software Defined Networking in covered Fi-Wi network", which was published at the EuCNC 2020 scientific conference, as part of his involvement in the EU-funded research project "5G-PHOS". In October 2020, under the financial support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, he will start the postgraduate program entitled "MSc Advanced Computing" at Imperial College London. In his spare time he likes playing and watching football, excercising and photography.
Panagiotis Anagnostaras (2020)Panagiotis was born in Kalamata in 1996, where he also grew up. He graduated from Third High School of Kalamata with distinguish (19.4/20) and he was admitted second in the row at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During his studies, he focused on the “Design and Structures” specialization, while his Diploma Thesis was titled “Co-Simulation of optimal control and dynamic analysis applied to a quadrotor”, supervised by prof. Natsiavas. He graduated with a mark of 8,66/10, placing him in the top 10%. After his studies in Thessaloniki, he served in the Greek Army as a private at Technical Corps. In September of 2020 with the financial support of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation he will continue his studies at the Master of Science in “Robotics, Systems and Control” at ETH Zurich. In his free time, he enjoys reading books, jogging, hiking and sailing.
Jason Milionis (2021)Jason was born in Athens in 1998. He attended the historic high school of Anavryta (Anavryta Model Experimental Lyceum), which is renowned for its academic excellence and distinguished alumni. Jason was the valedictorian of his class at Anavryta and gave the commencement speech during the graduation ceremony. From a young age, he had diverse interests in science and earned numerous distinctions in Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics, including a bronze medal in the European Science Olympiad and representing Greece in the International Chemistry Olympiad. Deciding to follow his most fervent passion, he studied at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), considered to be the prime engineering school of the country. He received his degree with the highest honors, graduating first of his class. During his university years, he was the recipient of a plethora of scholarships and awards, both for his academic performance at NTUA and his distinctions in international competitions, including a Silver Medal at the SEEMOUS mathematical olympiad for university students, and the first place in Greece in the worldwide programming competition IEEEXtreme, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). His diploma thesis was supervised by Prof. Dimitris Fotakis of the Division of Computer Science. Jason is a member of the IEEE, having held the position of the Vice-Chair of the IEEE NTUA Student Branch. Cherishing the educational mission of his university, he was a Teaching Assistant for many courses in his Department's curriculum, among which was the graduate-level "Cryptography" course. He also participated in the iGEM Athens 2019 research team, which earned Gold Medal and nomination for the Best New Application Research Project in the international Synthetic Biology (iGEM) conference in Boston. Being part of the "Unique Minds" organization, whose purpose is to guide high school students transition to university to pursue their true passion despite social norms or gender-based stereotypes, Jason organized the workshop for his Department, giving students highly informative knowledge of the School. His desire to investigate the fundamental capabilities and limitations of modern systems from a theoretical standpoint along with his preliminary experience with research, which had evolved to a fiery passion, led him to decide that a PhD in Computer Science would be the next step towards the realization of his goals. As a result of his endeavors, in September 2021, he will initiate his doctoral studies at Columbia University in the City of New York, working closely with the Computer Science Theory Group. For his graduate studies, he is entrusted by the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation with induction into its 2021 class of Scholars. Jason intends to pursue vibrant research in the domain of Theoretical Computer Science, with the ultimate motive to make a positive impact on society through his work.
Maria Proestaki (2021)Maria graduated from the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Crete in 2016, where she majored in Mathematical Modeling and Computational Techniques with a thesis titled “The nonlinear behavior of ECM and the long-range propagation of cell induced matrix displacements” under the supervision of Prof. Phoebus Rosakis. She then continued her studies while working as a research assistant with Prof. Jacob Notbohm at the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her M.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics in 2018. Maria is currently a PhD candidate in the Notbohm Research Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducting research on the mechanics of soft biological materials and cell-matrix interactions. Her work has resulted in several publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the articles “Modulus of fibrous collagen at the length scale of a cell” published in Experimental Mechanics and “Effect of matrix heterogeneity on cell mechanosensing” published in Soft Matter.
Konstantinos Kechagias (2021)Konstantinos was born in Athens in 1992, where he grew up. He graduated from the 1 st High School of Papagos with distinction and he was accepted to the Medical School of the University of Crete. During his undergraduate studies, he participated in several research projects in the laboratory of histology and embryology focusing on gynaecological cancer. After his graduation in July 2016, he served in the Hellenic Airforce as a military doctor. Following his military service, he continued his medical training working as a surgical trainee in “251 Hellenic Airforce general hospital”. At the same time, he worked as a clinical research fellow at Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences under the supervision of professor Falagas in the field of infectious diseases. In 2018, Konstantinos moved to the UK to complete an MSc degree in Reproductive and Developmental Biology at Imperial College London. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD degree in clinical medicine with a special interest in the role of microbiome in cervical carcinogenesis under the supervision of Dr Kyrgiou and Dr Paraskevaidi supported by NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and “the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation”.
Evangelos Dikopoulos (2022)Evangelos was born in Zakynthos in 1996, where he grew up and graduated from the 1st General Lyceum of Zakynthos. He then studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Patras, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was ranked under the top 2% of his class. During his studies, he specialized in “Electronics and Computers”, while his diploma thesis entitled “Design and implementation of an FPGA based TDC with picosecond level resolution” was supervised by Professor Alexios Birbas and Professor Michael Birbas. In September 2021 he started, with the generous support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation his PhD studies at the University of Michigan and under the supervision of Professor Michael Flynn, whose research group specializes in the design of integrated circuits and systems.
Antonios Papaoikonomou (2022)Antonios was born in Athens in 1997. After ranking amongst the top 0.8% in the Nationwide University Entrance Examination and ranking first amongst the people with origin from the Greek Island of Skyros, he was admitted to the National Technical University of Athens to study Electrical and Computer Engineering. With a major in Computer Science and after conducting research at the AILS Lab at NTUA he graduated in 2022 (BSc & MEng) with a final mark of “Very Good”. After his graduation, Antonios served at the Hellenic Army as a Software Engineer/Analyst as part of the Research and Informatic Corps at the Center of Information Technology Support of the Hellenic Army (C.I.T.S.H.A./KE.P.Y.E.S.). He has also published his research at the “Annals of Nuclear Energy” Journal regarding Deep Learning and Self-Supervised Learning techniques to monitor Nuclear Reactor Core perturbations, while being the main author of this internationally cooperative published work. With the generous help of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation, he is currently pursuing a MSc in Applied Machine Learning at the Imperial College of London in the United Kingdom following his passion for research on the field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In his spare time, he enjoys to play the guitar and listen to music.
Vasilis_Moschou (2022)I was born in Alexandroupolis in 1998, where I also raised until 18. From a young age, I had normal enchant and love for science, more specifically for Mathematics and Physics. This passion led me to taking part to many Math competitions during my school years, while I was also a track & field athlete with honorable placings in may national championships. I graduated from Third High School with a grade 19,5/20 ‘’EXCELLENT’’ and I was admitted in the Department Of Electrical And Computer Engineering of Democritus University of Thrace in 2016. During my studies I specialized in <>, while my Master Thesis was titled <> under the supervision of associate prof. Mr Farmakis. I graduated with a grade 8,42/10 (top 5% of my class) in 2021. After my studies, I served in the Greek Army as a private, member of the lnformatics and Research Office under the specialization of Computer Programmer – Analyst. offering IT consulting and assistance in the maintenance and improvement of the local servers. Finishing my military service, I was accepted by DTU(Danish Technical University) for my MSc degree with the financial assistance from General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation in September 2022
Nicholas Simos (2023)Nicholas Simos was raised in the island of Crete, Greece, were he completed his studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete (BSc & MEng) with a final mark of “Very Good”. From a young age he was interested in science, technology, computers, engineering, and biology/medicine. These multidisciplinary interests led to the selection of biomedical/neuroscience research as main area of study. As a research assistant, he is affiliated with the Computational Biomedicine Lab of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Heraklion, Crete, Greece and the Physiology of Cognition Lab in the University of Liège, Belgium. His doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr Athena Demertzi in the latter institution (University of Liège) will be graciously supported by the General Michalis Arnaoutis foundation, which he is immensely thankful for. His detailed interests included advanced neuroimaging techniques, Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning or AI in Psychology. Previous research includes applications of functional neuroimaging for the study of Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis and mild Traumatic Brain Injury as well as Machine Learning predictions using behavioral and cognitive data from cancer patients as well as elders with mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Future research plans include the study of dissociation, an altered state of consciousness through cognitive, psychological and pharmacological manipulations. To date he has contributed to eight journal publications and two conference papers, six as first author.
Stella Theodoraki (2023)Styliani (Stella) Theodoraki was born in 1999 in Heraklion, Crete, where she also grew up. In 2017 she graduated from high school with a total grade of 19.6/20 and managed to get into the School of Mechanical Engineering in the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). During her studies, she specialized in the field of Energy Engineering, with a specific emphasis on the Renewable Energy Sources. She completed a 2-month internship in the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), where she worked on a project regarding the implementation of sustainable fuels in the aviation industry. In cooperation with the CERTH and the Laboratory of Steam Boilers and Thermal Plants in NTUA, she completed her diploma thesis on the “Design and modeling of a Waste-to-energy plant with CO2 capture using the Chemical Looping Combustion technology”. In 2022, she graduated from university with a total grade of 8.22/10, and upon her graduation, she went on to work at CERTH as a research associate. In September 2023, she will begin her master’s studies in the MSc program “Sustainable Energy Technology” of the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, thanks to the financial aid of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation.
Maria-Angeliki Tsatiri (2023)Maria-Angeliki Tsatiri was born in Volos in 1999. Graduating from high school with a total grade of 19.2 she moved to Alexandroupolis for her BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Democritus University of Thrace. During her Bachelor studies she specialized more in pharmacogenetics. After completing her studies with “Excellent” she received an Erasmus+ scholarship to perform her internship at the Department of Microbiology at ELTE university in Budapest, Hungary. Her interest in cancer research and novel biotherapies led her to move to the Netherlands, where she pursued an MSc in Cancer, Stem cells and Developmental Biology at Utrecht University. During the first year, she performed her internship at the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht (RMCU), focusing on the development of gene editing tools as a therapeutic approach against rare metabolic diseases, as well as on the implementation of a metabolic therapy against cancer cells. Currently, she is in the second year of the master thanks to the generous help of General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. Alongside her studies she is interested in Consultancy and Entrepreneurship, that is why she attended the Utrecht University Business Course (UUBC) and collaborated with major consultancy companies.
Vasileios_Chondrorrizos (2023)Vasileios Chondrorrizos was born in 1996 in Athens and grew up in Lamia. In 2014 he graduated first from high school with a grade of 19.4/20 and entered the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. During his studies he specialized in electronic circuits and more specifically in the design of microelectronic integrated circuits and systems. He graduated in 2020 with a grade of 8.96/10. He immediately started working in the industry and more specifically in a company involved in the design of analog and digital integrated circuits and systems. He worked in this company from March 2020 until July 2023 and gained three years of work experience in integrated circuit design. In September 2023 he started his MSc program at TU Delft, in the Netherlands, entitled "Microelectronics", thanks to the scholarship awarded to him by the Arnaoutis Foundation.
Nikolas Spyrellis (2024)Nikolas Spyrellis was born in Athens, Greece, where he has lived, studied, trained and worked ever since. Nikolas has a rich background in digital transformation, having spent two years at KPMG as a Senior Digital Transformation Advisor and one year at BCG as an IT Consultant. He has helped clients in several industries to achieve comprehensive digital overhauls, focusing on technology, business processes, data, and people. His projects span digital strategy and roadmap development, digital technologies enablement, business processes optimization, and low code platforms implementation. Nikolas holds a BSc in Management Science and Technology from the Athens University of Economics and Business, specializing in Information Systems and E-Business. He is currently advancing his knowledge through an MSc in Digital Transformation from the University of Hull. An entrepreneur at heart, Nikolas has launched two multi-awarded startups: Drug n Drop, a venture aimed at ending medicine waste, and InteliPath, an AI-driven educational platform tailored to individual learning styles. Also, a passionate sports enthusiast, Nikolas has excelled in Tae Kwon Do, representing Greece's national team for three consecutive years (2017-2019) and competing in over 100 professional fights.