Scholarship News

Eleni Vasilaki is Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the North American system) in Machine Learning & Computational Biology at the department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK. She has previous appointments as Scientific Collaborator at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Assistant/Postdoc at the University of Berne and Associate Lecturer at the University of Sussex. She obtained a PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex during which she received a two-years scholarship from the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. In addition, she holds a Masters degree in Microelectronics and a Bachelors’ degree in Informatics & Telecommunications, both awarded by the University of Athens. She is a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Chartered Engineer registered with the Engineering Council UK.

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 graduated in 2003 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Aristotle University, where he came top of his class with a grade of 9.58/10. As a scholar of The General Arnaoutis Charitable Foundation, he studied at Imperial College, completing an MSc in Telecommunications and Signal Processing in 2004. Nikolaos came top of his class of 55 students with an average score of 90.4%. In the same year, his team also entered into a worldwide Software Development competition, organised by Microsoft, with 91 countries and over 11,000 students participating. They achieved first place in Eastern Europe and came third in the world. After working for 1 year in London as a Quantitative Developer, Nikolaos joined Stanford University in California in 2005 on a full fellowship, where he completed his MS in Electrical Engineering, focusing on Optimization and Financial Engineering. In 2007, Nikolaos joined the Operations Research Center at MIT, in Cambridge Massachusetts, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. His current research interests lie in Operations Research, Financial Engineering and applications of Convex Optimization in Finance

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 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.

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 Catholic University of 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. His research interests include Optimal and Non-linear Control, Signal and Image Processing, and Bioresponses.

Mr. Ioannis Spyridon Gousias, 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 Neuroscience in Imperial College London (MSc in Integrative Neuroscience) with Outstanding Distinction and ranked first among all the postgraduate students. He started his PhD on Neonatal Brain Imaging in ICL, in collaboration with the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre and the Department of Pediatrics in Hammersmith Hospital, the Department of Computing in ICL and the Institute of Child Health in the University College London. Ioannis works on anatomical modeling and brain mapping of premature infants, infants of normal gestational period and children up to the age of 6 years, implementing, improving and developing the algorithms and methods he has already established and has been using for adult brain mapping and probabilistic anatomical brain atlasing. Also, combining brain atlasing with probabilistic tractography and networks theory, he monitors the development of the “network” of the brain and its components. Basic aim of his research is the linkage between anatomical findings and clinical and neuropsychological examinations, the combination of anatomical and functional brain imaging, as well as the monitoring of the normal or abnormal development of the brain from the age of birth till adulthood, based on clinical, qualitative and quantitative data. He won the first prize during the Young Scientist’s Day in London for 2007. He was awarded as Neuroscientist of the Year in the United Kingdom for 2007. Ηe was the official representative of the United Kingdom in the annual meeting of the Nobel Laureates with the world’s most talented and ingenious young scientists, after national selection and final world judgment by the Council of the Nobel Laureates. He was awarded as New Investigator in the Annual World Conference on Paediatrics of 2007. His research was on the front cover of the scientific journal NeuroImage in April 2008. He is an advanced violin player, speaks five languages and has served as President in the European Youth Parliament.

Kostas 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 successfully completed his MSc degree in Advanced Photonics and Communications at University of Warwick with an average of 82%. He was then accepted by the University of Warwick as a PhD student and is currently working to his PhD degree. His research interests include Smart Arrays, Computational Electromagnetics and Numerical Analysis.

Anna Chroni graduated from the University of Macedonia in Greece with a degree in Business Administration in 2004. During the academic years 2000-2004 of her undergraduate studies she received scholarships for academic excellence from the State Scholarships Foundation (Greece). In May 2003 she was awarded a scholarship by the “Rotary Club of Thessalonica” for academic excellence during the first two years of undergraduate studies. She graduated first in class with a grade of 8.67/10 (Excellent). In October 2005 she commenced her postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics, doing a masters degree in Operational Research. She graduated from L.S.E. with a distinction. She is currently working for London Underground as a transport modeller in the Strategy Department.

Ioannis Saras graduated from the Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus, Automation Department (2000-2004). Following my undergraduate studies, I completed the Master of Research in Automatic Control at the University Paul-Sabatier at Toulouse and effectuated my thesis at the laboratory LAAS-CNRS, which concerned the robust control of a satellite formation using differential drag, in collaboration with the French Space Agency (CNES). Since October 2006 I am a PhD student at the “Laboratory of Signals & Systems” of the University Paris-Sud XI. My research project deals with the nonlinear control of mechanical systems and passivity theory (Passivity-based control). Special classes of systems to be considered are under actuated mechanical systems and mechanical systems with impacts (e.g. biped robots).

Maria is currently a PhD student with the Circuits and Systems Group of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of Imperial College London. Her research involves the design and implementation of image and video processing systems in reconfigurable hardware. Such systems need to process large amounts of data and software is often proven to be inadequate. Maria graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Patras, Greece. During her undergraduate studies she received a number of awards from the Greek National Foundation for Scholarships and the Technical Chamber of Greece. Apart from Greek, she also speaks French, Italian and English.

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 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). The title of his Diploma thesis was "Improved Algorithms for the Fixed-Parameter Cluster-Detection Problem and Applications". Since October 2006 he works for his Ph. D. thesis in the area of Theoretical Computer Science in the RWTH Aachen. His main research interests are the algorithmic graph theory, as well as the algorithmic game theory, with applications to routing problems on networks.

Dimitris Mavroeidis is a Computer Science graduate of the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business. The title of his final year's project was "Automatic classification of natural language questions into categories". He served in the Greek Army and has also worked as a programmer for several years. He received the MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 2007. The title of his master's thesis reads "Automatic Domain Adaptation in Statistical Machine Translation". His research interests include Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Translation. He speaks Greek, English and French.

Lina completed successfully her undergraduate studies in computer science obtaining a 2:1 grade (7.46/10), in the Piraeus Graduate School of Industrial Sciences. She 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. She has just graduated from the University College London, in which she attended an MSc in Software Systems Engineering. Part of the Master was taught at the London Business School which gave her a priceless insight of the trading mechanisms and tools. Along with her undergraduate studies she also held a part-time position as a Computer teacher in Computer Science training Institutes and she also dealt with Managerial Support for the Government Employment Agency and Information System Operation for the Social Insurance Foundation. During last summer she did an internship in Citigroup. Working for a top investment bank was a great challenge for her and helped her gain priceless experience by making her fully aware of real-life responsibilities she will face in the future. Currently, she has been employed by Sungard, a software and IT services company and she is looking forward to excel in her field by using the techniques she was taught throughout her Master degree and work out the best way of implementing the acquired knowledge using innovative technologies.

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 graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2004. After having fulfilled his military obligations, he attended a postgraduate course (M.Sc.) on telecommunications at the Technische Universtät and graduated with distinction in 2007. Currently he is working towards the Ph.D. degree on the topic of mobile communications at the same university, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and with the support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation. His research interests focus on next generation mobile communications and cellular networks.

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. By handing in his diploma thesis titled "Microstrip Antenna Optimization Using Genetic Algorithms" he graduated in 2006 with a degree specialization in Telecommunications. 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 Univ ersity of Hong Kong where he participated in various projects in the field of telecommunications engineering. In 2008 he enrolled in the MSc in Telecommunications programme at Universtity College London as a scholar of the Arnaoutis Foundation.

Paraskevi Papoula entered the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the National Technical University of Athens in 2004 and will graduate in July 2009, with a major in Communications and great point average 8.42. While working on her thesis entitled “Cross-layer design and analysis of joint-optimization techniques for wireless ad hoc networks” her interest to specialize on computer networks became imminent. She has been admitted to the Electrical Engineering and Information Technology department of ETH in Zurich and will begin her two-year Master Program on September of 2009 with the valuable support of the General Arnaoutis Foundation.

Maria Theodorou graduated in June 2009 from the “School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences” of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Her Diploma Thesis title is “Theoretical analysis and simulation of a physical ferromagnetic substance using the Ising model”. With the support of the General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation she will pursue postgraduate studies at Imperial College London in the field of bioengineering (MSc in Biomedical Engineering with Neurotechnology) in October 2009; accomplishing her dream to acquire knowledge in this revolutionary scientific area and study at a world class University in London.

Marina Georgia Arvanitidou graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2006. After working as a research associate on medical signal processing at the same university she joined the Communication Systems Group of the Technische Universtät Berlin in 2007, where she is currently pursuing a PhD degree with the support of the Arnaoutis Foundation. Her research interests lie in object segmentation within video sequences and video analysis.

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 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.

He has graduated with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has very successfully completed his studies at the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), with emphasis on communication. He has been accepted for admission at Imperial College London for postgraduate study in course module for Master of Science (MSc) in « Communications and Signal Processing » of Electrical and Electronic Engineering department. He was granted a scholarship by « The General Michael Arnaoutis Foundation » for funding the mentioned post graduated study in the academic year 2009 – 2010.