Speakers
Yanna Andronopoulou
General Manager Greece, Cyprus, Malta - Microsoft
Anant Agarwal
Chief Platform Officer, 2U
Founder, edX
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos
Founder & CEO, Metrika
Costas Antoniou
Full Professor in the Chair of Transportation Systems Engineering, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Yannis Assael
Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind
"MIT's Innovators Under 35”
“Forbes' 30 Under 30”
Chryssanthi Berbati
Head of Group Business Planning, IR & ESG, Piraeus Financial Holdings
Marios Bompoulos
Innovation Hub Director, PPC
Andreas Botsikas
Director of Analytics & AI Hub, PwC Greece
Thelma Chatziathanasiou
Journalist, Kathimerini/Money Review
Dimitris Delevegos
Journalist, Kathimerini/Money Review
Theodoros Evgeniou
Professor, INSEAD
Co-Founder, Tremau
Oded Gour-Lavie
CEO & Co-Founder, NT Tao Ltd
Melissa Heikkilä
Senior Reporter for AI, MIT Technology Review
Ted Hu
Senior Manager of International Partnerships, MIT Technology Review
Bill Karnazes
Chief Operations Officer, VIOHALCO
Manolis Kellis
Professor, MIT Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Biology
Kathleen Kennedy
Executive Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
Haris Lambropoulos
President, Hellenic Development Bank of Investments and Member BoD (alt) European Investment Bank
Alexandros Manos
Chief Executive Officer, Netcompany-Intrasoft S.A
Martina Mazzarello
Senior Post-doctoral Researcher at Senseable City Lab, MIT
Freideriki Michailidou
Scientist and Entrepreneur
Previously Lecturer at ETH Zurich
MIT U35
Marianna Nathanail
EIB Representative in Greece
George Nounesis
Director and Chairman of the Board, National Centre for Scientific Research ”Demokritos"
Despina Konti
Journalist, Kathimerini
Iliana Magra
Journalist, Kathimerini
Yannis Palaiologos
Correspondent-at-large, Kathimerini
Vassilis Papakonstantinou
Partner, Blue Dome Capital
Co-founder, Cognitor AI
Dimitris Papastergiou
Minister of Digital Governance of the Hellenic Republic
Evangelos Pappas
Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, RTsafe
Alexandros Paterakis
Deputy CEO Digital Transformation, PPC
Kyriakos Pierrakakis
Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports of the Hellenic Republic
Adam Provatas
Journalist-Author, ERT S.A. Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation
Georgios Skretas
Director, Institute for Bio-innovation Biomedical Sciences Research Center "Alexander Fleming"
Chief Executive Officer, ResQ Biotech Private Company
Gregory Stephanopoulos
W.H Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, MIT
Conrad Wolfram
Co-founder & Strategic Director, Wolfram Group: Founder
computerbasedmath.org
Davide Zaccagnini, MD
Founder and CEO, Agora
Angelos Tsereklas Zafeirakis
Managing Director, SOTIRIA Technology
MIT U35
George Zavvos
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hellenic Development Bank
Speaker Details
Yanna is the General Manager for Microsoft Greece, Cyprus and Malta since July 2023. She is leading a team across three countries focusing on accelerating the digital transformation of the private and public sectors through harnessing AI and the opportunities linked to the arrival of the area’s first datacenters. Yanna has been a member of Microsoft’s leadership team for the last four years and joined the company back in 2014 to lead the digital transformation of Banking, Insurance and Telecoms across Greece and Cyprus, with outstanding results. She rose to every challenge amidst the pandemic through her Enterprise Commercial Lead role and led her team to attain significant commercial wins and to deliver prosperous growth consistently despite macro-economic and geopolitical challenges. Through an industry-first approach, Yanna established a culture of strategic, long-term partnerships with customers and partners, counting most leading, high-profile businesses in her portfolio. Yanna is passionate about gender balance at work and women in technology, being herself one of the few women who went into the industry early on, holding various roles in Sales, Product Management and Technical Delivery for the likes of Huawei, Ericsson and Intracom. At Microsoft she is also leading the Women ERG group, eager to unite the company’s broader ecosystem in securing equal opportunities for all. Yanna an Electrical Engineering graduate from the University of Patras, also holds an Executive MBA from Athens University of Economics and Business.
Speaker Details
Founder, edX
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Anant is chief platform officer of 2U, founder of edX, and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He launched edX in 2012 and guided the organization’s vision to expand access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere. As the first educator to teach an edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, Anant drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. Today, he leverages his expertise in building powerful online learning engines to drive edX’s growth as one of the world’s most comprehensive free-to-degree online learning platforms, under parent company 2U. Anant holds a bachelor’s degree from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Speaker Details
Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos is the Founder & CEO of Metrika, the leading blockchain risk management and compliance platform for digital assets. Prior to Metrika, Nikos served as Principal at Cartesian, the world’s oldest strategy consulting firm in the telecoms and technology sector (TMT). Nikos is an active serving member on CFTC’s technology advisory committee advising the regulator on blockchain technology and digital assets’ risk management. Nikos holds an engineering degree (EECS) with honors from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and two graduate degrees from MIT, an MSc. in EECS and an MBA from MIT Sloan.
Speaker Details
Constantinos Antoniou is a Full Professor in the Chair of Transportation Systems Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. He holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from NTUA (1995), a MS in Transportation (1997) and a PhD in Transportation Systems (2004), both from MIT. His research focuses on transport policy, modelling and optimization of transportation models, data analytics and statistical learning for transportation, and human factors for future mobility. Costas has a proven track record in attracting competitive funding on both national and international levels. He is/has been Principal Investigator (PI) of several research projects (e.g. EU-funded PHOEBE, iDREAMS, MOMENTUM, Drive2thefuture, NOESIS, as well as nationally-funded, e.g. German DFG DVanPool and Trampa, and federally funded PANAMERA). In the last five years, he has brought more than 4 million Euros of third party funding, from EU, federal and regional sources.
Costas has made significant contributions in several fields, including the calibration of transportation simulation models, and the identification and quantification of factors affecting the acceptance, adoption and demand for conventional and established transportation modes. He is developing tools that are being used to support evidence-based transport policy.
Prof. Antoniou has authored more than 470 scientific publications, including more than 175 papers in international, peer-reviewed journals, 265 in international conference proceedings, 3 books and 30 book chapters. He has a Scopus h-index of 37 (Google Scholar h-index: 50, i10-index: 150, i-100 index: 18) with more than 4500 citations (Google Scholar 8478).
He is a member of several professional and scientific organizations, editorial boards (Associate Editor of Transportation Research – Part A: Policy and Practice; Deputy Editor in Chief of IET Intelligent Transportation Systems; Associate Editor of Transportation Letters; Editor of EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics; Editorial Board member of Transportation Research – Part C, Accident Analysis and Prevention, Accident Analysis and Prevention, Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, Smart Cities;), committees (such as TRB committee ABJ70 - Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications and the Steering Committee of hEART – The European Association for Research in Transportation).
He enjoys teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, in both English and German. He has supervised seven PhD students, and is currently supervising seventeen more. His students have been appointed to faculty positions at well-known universities, such as University College London (UCL), DTU, while visiting faculty and doctoral students that were mentored by Prof. Antoniou have also received prestigious faculty positions, e.g. at the UPC and U of Arizona.
Speaker Details
"MIT's Innovators Under 35”
“Forbes' 30 Under 30”
Dr. Yannis Assael is a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind specialising in Artificial Intelligence, and is featured in “MIT's Innovators Under 35” and “Forbes' 30 Under 30” lists of distinguished scientists in Europe. In 2013, he graduated from the Department of Applied Informatics of University of Macedonia. With full scholarships, he completed an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, finishing first in his year, followed by an MRes in Machine Learning at Imperial College London. In 2016, he returned to Oxford to pursue a DPhil degree with a scholarship from Google DeepMind, and after a series of research breakthroughs and entrepreneurial ventures, he started as a researcher at Google DeepMind. He has made significant contributions in the fields of audio-visual speech recognition, multi-agent communication, as well as AI for Culture and the study of damaged ancient texts. He serves as a Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence to the Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance, while his research has been featured on the cover of the scientific journal Nature, and focuses on expanding and contributing to the greater good.
Speaker Details
Chryssanthi Berbati is a General Manager, supervising Business Planning, Investor Relations & ESG functions at Piraeus Bank, the largest lender by loans and deposits in Greece. Chryssanthi is an experienced banking professional with extensive exposure to various sectors of Piraeus Bank since 1999. She holds a BA degree from the University of Athens, while currently she is attending the Executive MBA programme in Saïd Business School of Oxford University. Chryssanthi is a member of Piraeus Bank’s Executive Committee and Vice Chair of the Bank’s ESG committee.
Speaker Details
Marios Bompoulos holds an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Portsmouth. He started his career at Network Rail Ltd, UK, in 2010 as an Electrical Engineer. He was then promoted to Senior Project Engineer and Programme Engineering Manager, obtaining extensive experience in managing complex projects in the Energy (Electrification) and Rail Network sectors. Since April 2022, he is the Director of PPC Innovation Hub, the division that holds PPC’s Laboratories and Research & Innovation Centre. As the Hub’s Director, Mr. Bompoulos deploys strategic initiatives and innovative digital technologies within the Energy and Testing, Inspection & Certification (TIC) Industry. He is also spearheading PPC’s Start-up Incubator & Accelerator project and manages PPC’s Innovation Fund.
Speaker Details
Andreas recently joined PwC Greece's Advisory services to solve important problems using advanced technologies. His journey started during his PhD, focusing on AI optimization. As a software engineer lead, he contributed to the birth of IoT through EU-funded research and led multiple engineering projects on behalf of the university. HeI then joined Microsoft, digitally transforming the Greek finance sector by modernizing their web and mobile banking platforms. Later, as an Architect in the worldwide CTO office, he guided the Data & AI domain, collaborating with global teams to deliver high-quality big data and AI-based solutions to S500 clients. He then established the worldwide AI practice in FastTrack for the Azure team, leading world-class engineers. Outside of work, together with his wife, they enjoy their own cognitive experiment: raising our three lovely daughters.
Speaker Details
Thelma Chatziathanasiou has a Bachelor of Laws from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a Master's degree in international political economy from King's College London. She works at Kathimerini since 2018, first in the print newspaper and then the website, focusing on business and finance
Speaker Details
Dimitris Delevegos is a journalist at Kathimerini newspaper and Money Review. As a reporter his focus is on business, economics, real estate, tourism, construction, aviation and state-owned enterprises. In the past he worked as a reporter and hosted shows for Greek public and private radio and television, including Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) and Seven, which was one of the first private tv stations in Greece.
Speaker Details
Co-Founder, Tremau
Theos Evgeniou is a professor of Decision Sciences and Technology Management at INSEAD and director of the INSEAD Executive Education program on Transforming your Business with AI.
He has been working on Machine Learning and AI for the past 25 years, on areas ranging from AI innovations for business process optimization and improving decisions in Marketing and Finance, to AI regulation, as well as on new Machine Learning methods. His research has appeared in leading journals, such as in Science Magazine, Nature Machine Intelligence, Machine Learning, Lancet Digital Health, Journal of Machine Learning Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review magazine, and others.
Professor Evgeniou is a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI, an advisor for the BCG Henderson Institute, was a World Economic Forum Academic Partner for Artificial Intelligence, and together with three INSEAD alums also a co-founder of Tremau, a B2B SaaS company whose mission is to build a digital world that is safe & beneficial for all. He gives talks and consults for a number of organisations in his areas of expertise, including advising CEOs and giving keynotes in corporate executive events. He has received four degrees from MIT, two BSc degrees simultaneously, one in Computer Science and one in Mathematics, as well as a Master and a PhD degree in Computer Science.
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Rear Admiral (ret.) Oded Gour-Lavie is the CEO co-founder of NT Tao Ltd. an alternative energy startup focused on breakthrough compact fusion technology with the goal to democratize clean and affordable energy worldwide. He is also a Research Fellow in the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy (HMS). Previously the Chairman of the Dolphin Association of veteran submariners. He concluded his military career in 2015 as the Head of the IDF’s Legal & Strategic Policy Team as part of the planning directorate. He is the former Head of the Sea Division in charge of Naval Operations, Training and Doctrine for the Israeli Navy and former Commander of the Israeli Submarine Force. He graduated Com-Laude in Electrical Engineering from the Technion - Israeli Institute of Technology. Received his Master's in Public Administration (MC-MPA 2008) from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, participated in the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program. Oded was also a Visiting Fellow (2019) at MIT Sloan school of Management focused on entrepreneurship and business strategy
Speaker Details
Melissa Heikkilä is a senior reporter at MIT Technology Review, where she covers artificial intelligence and how it is changing our society. Previously she wrote about AI policy and politics at POLITICO. She has also worked at The Economist and used to be a news anchor. Forbes named her as one of its 30 under 30 in European media in 2020.
Speaker Details
Ted Hu has been with MIT Technology Review since 2018 and oversees and works with all the international partners and editions of the magazine. During this time, he has also helped facilitate the international editions of EmTech and is the Global Ambassador for Innovators Under 35. He has helped organize these events while also being a presenter and moderator for several conferences. Innovators Under 35 is one of his favorite communities of Technology Review and he is delighted to be a part of this event as the bridge between the regional competitions.
Speaker Details
Bill Karnazes is Member of the Viohalco’s Executive Committee and Group’s Chief Corporate Services Officer. He is responsible for the Group’s operational areas of International Business Operations, Marketing Communication, Sustainability (ESG), Non-ferrous Metal Purchasing, Central Procurement, Supply Chain & Logistics, Operational Excellence, Information and Security Technology, and Corporate Human Resources. He is also President of TEKA Business Solutions.
He previously served as Vice President of Global Business Operations for Qualcomm Incorporated. He was responsible for Global Business Operations activities within Qualcomm’s semiconductor business unit. He has held several executive-level positions at Qualcomm over the last 24 years.
Speaker Details
Manolis Kellis is a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT, and leads the MIT Computational Biology Group at MIT CSAIL and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research seeks to understand the mechanistic basis of human disease, to develop new therapeutics that reverse disease circuitry, and to enable personalized medicine, using AI and machine learning to integrate genetics and genomics, single-cell epigenomics and transcriptomics, and high-throughput experiments, applied to Alzheimer's, Obesity, Cancer, Schizophrenia, Cardiovascular, and Immune Disorders. He helped lead several large-scale genomics projects, including Roadmap Epigenomics, ENCODE, Genotype Tissue-Expression (GTEx), and Comparative Genomics projects. He has authored over 280 journal publications cited more than 160,000 times. He received the US Presidential Award for Science and Engineering by Barack Obama, the Mendel Medal for Outstanding Achievements in Science, the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, the Argo Science Award by the Hellenic President, the Boston Patent Law Association award, the NSF CAREER award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Technology Review TR35 recognition, the AIT Niki Award, and the Sprowls award for the best Ph.D. thesis in computer science at MIT. He has obtained more than 20 multi-year grants from the NIH, and his trainees hold faculty positions at Stanford, Harvard, CMU, McGill, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and other top universities. He lived in Greece and France before moving to the US, and he studied and conducted research at MIT, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and the Cold Spring Harbor Lab. For more info, see: compbio.mit.edu
Speaker Details
With multiple roles at MIT, Kathleen is leading on the front lines of cutting-edge technology and innovation. Right now, she is extremely passionate about climate change, digital transformation, the evolving nature of work, and the future of education. She is a strategic leader with a unique skill set for transforming organizations as well as building new ones.
Kathleen is currently the Executive Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, a multidisciplinary research center. She is also the senior director of MIT Horizon, a digital learning platform helping global organizations to up skill at scale. In addition, she is a venture partner at Good Growth Capital.
She has held several leadership positions at MIT, including President and Chief Strategy Officer of Technology Review, MIT’s global media company; President of the MIT Enterprise Forum; and Director of Special Projects of MIT, where she worked as a lead organizer of The Engine, a venture fund and accelerator program for tough tech startups.
Kathleen is a cofounder and board member of Manifest Boston (formally HubWeek), a first-of-its-kind civic collaboration that brings together the most creative and inventive minds making an impact in art, science and technology.
She has served on numerous selection committees including the Eisenhower Fellowships, the Lemelson-MIT prize and the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change competition. She is a mentor for MIT DesignX. She was awarded the Folio: 40, which recognizes the most innovative and influential people in the media industry, and named by the Women of the Harvard Club as one of Boston’s Most Influential Women.
Speaker Details
President of the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments SA (HDBI, ex TANEO-New Economy Fund); Member of the Board of Directors (alt.), European Investment Bank (EIB). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics (Ph.D. econ. LSE). He is elected faculty member (Assistant Professor with tenure) at the University of Patras. He is Counsellor elected (member of the Board of Directors) of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), actively participating in a variety of activities to promote entrepreneurship, innovation, and business and human resources development. Also, he is President of the Institute of Research & Studies of the Union of Hellenic Chambers (UHC), Chief Counsel, Mentor and Coach of The Athens Startup Business Incubator (THEA), Secretary General of ICC (Hellas), Member of the Attica Regional Research & Innovation Council, Member of the Board of Directors of the Arab-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and Development etc. He has acted as Principal Consultant of the World Bank; Adviser to the Ministers of -Education, -Tourism Development and -Health & Social Solidarity, as well as, served as top executive, member of the Board of Directors and advisor in various companies, funds, organisations, and foundations in the private and the public sector in Greece and abroad. Ηe has participated in official missions abroad as well as in various committees on a national, European, and international level; recipient of various distinctions and scholarships, having extensive voluntary social work and active involvement in public affairs.
Speaker Details
Alexandros N. Manos is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience leading companies in developing, marketing, and selling internationally cutting-edge technologies. He holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering and a BA in Business Economics from Brown University, and an MSc in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since January 2015, he is a member of the Board of Directors & holds the Chief Executive Officer position of Netcompany-Intrasoft S.A., a Luxembourg based leading European IT Solutions and Services Group of Companies. Previously held positions include: member of the Board of Directors & CEO of Intracom Telecom S.A., an international telecommunication systems vendor CEO of Conklin Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia, a company offering broadband solutions and IPTV to the US market.
He is a member of several scientific, engineering and economics societies and a young global leader of World Economic Forum (WEF).
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Speaker Details
Previously Lecturer at ETH Zurich
MIT U35
Dr. Freideriki (Frida) Michailidou is a scientist and entrepreneur. Until recently, she was a researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich in Switzerland where she developed sustainable processes for creating fragrant materials by combining analytical chemistry and biotechnology with perfumery and consumer science. Her research in sustainable fragrance creation has the potential to impact multiple industries including the future of food, pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and advanced materials industries. As a result, she has been recently awarded as an «MIT Innovator under 35 Europe» by the MIT Technology Review.
As part of her research, she led an expedition to Mount Olympus, Greece's highest mountain, to collect volatile emissions from rare, protected plants growing at nearly 7,000 feet above sea level. Using cutting-edge analytical technology, Michailidou identified the molecular structures contributing to the unique scents of these plants. She next focused on advancing eco-friendly biocatalysis techniques to harness renewable raw materials, to promote consumer safety while reducing the use of experimental animals.
Frida completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and CPE Lyon (France). After a Master’s in chemistry (University of Lyon 1) and a research stay in Shanghai (China), Frida obtained her PhD in natural product biosynthesis from the University of St Andrews (Scotland), in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. Following a brief period working as an R&D scientist in industry (UK) and as a postdoc fellow at WWU Münster (Germany), she joined ETH as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, where she led an ambitious project at the intersections of protein engineering and synthetic biology. Shortly afterwards, she was awarded with the prestigious Junior Collegium Fellowship to conduct her original project in fragrance research and the Swiss STARTUP CAMPUS award for her innovative business plan for sustainable perfumes. Her research and international work have also been recognised in digital science news platforms and she was featured in the Swiss women’s magazine, Annabelle.
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Marianna Nathanail is the European Investment Bank (EIB) Legal Representative in Greece, engaging actively with EU delegations, national, local, public, and private sector stakeholders, business associations and academia partners in Greece and Cyprus to promote the strategic orientations and priorities of the EIB, supporting sustainable investments, energy transition, climate adaptation, research, innovation, female entrepreneurship, social investments and skills. A professional with 25 years of service in the banking, finance, and legal sector. Having joined the EIB in 2015, she worked at the EIB Headquarters in Luxembourg in Capital Markets and Risk Management positions, participating in horizontal EIB Group working groups for the development of Group policies on Market Conduct, Regulatory Compliance, Sustainable Finance and Corporate Governance. Prior to joining the EIB, she worked for the European Commission, DG FISMA and DG Internal Market, as seconded national expert, coordinator of the EC drafting team for the Market Abuse Regulation, representing the European Commission in the Interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council (trilogues) for major financial services regulations. Before joining the European Commission, she served as Legal Advisor to the Hellenic Capital Markets Commission, also representing Greece as Delegate in Council negotiations, and Legal Counsel for major international and Greek groups of companies in the energy, construction, and shipping sector. She holds a degree from the Athens University Law School, a master’s degree in law (LL.M.) and a master’s degree (MSc) in Banking and Finance.
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Dr. Georgios Nounesis is the Director & Chairman of the Board of the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos." He is credited with implementing reforms that led to increased technology transfer rates to startups and successful spin-offs. He founded AHEDD, now coordinating "Smart Attica," one of the four European Digital Innovation Hubs of Greece, and pioneered the Stavros Niarchos Industrial Fellowship Program. Dr. Nounesis studied Physics at the University of Athens and the University of Minnesota and attended executive courses at the Harvard Kennedy School. Since 2020, he has been a Member of the Board of the Hellenic Space Center, with his term expiring in 2025.
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Despina Konti was born in Athens. She has studied at the Philology Department of the University of Athens and has completed postgraduate studies in Information and Communication and in Political and Social Communication at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University and at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, respectively. She is a journalist at Kathimerini covering, among other topics, the startup and technology industry in Greece.
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Iliana Magra is a journalist with Kathimerini, Greece’s leading daily newspaper, for which she has covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from the pandemic and the MeToo movement to the effects of climate change and this year's electoral race. In 2022, she broke the story of an abuse scandal in one of the country's most famous NGOs. In 2021, she was the only Greek journalist to accompany Pope Francis on his first visit to Cyprus and Greece. Previously, she was a staff journalist with The New York Times in London, while her words have also appeared in The Sunday Times and The Financial Times.
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Yannis Palaiologos (b. 1979) is a correspondent-at-large for Kathimerini newspaper and the investigative website inside story (www.insidestory.gr) and a correspondent in Greece for the Wall Street Journal. Between January 2020 and mid-2022 he was EU and NATO correspondent for Kathimerini and SKAI TV & Radio. He is the author of “The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules”, a book on the Greek crisis, first published in September 2014 by Portobello Books in London, with an expanded second edition in the summer of 2016.
He has written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Financial Times. He has also reported on Greece for the websites of Time magazine, Politico, Politico Europe, The New Republic and The American Prospect. He has commented on Greek issues for the BBC, CNN, NPR, Al-Jazeera and other international outlets.
Between 2009-2012, he was the editor-in-chief of Free Sunday newspaper and between 2006-9 he was the special supplements editor of City Press newspaper. He got his start in journalism in London, notably doing work experience stints at the foreign desk of The Times and The Independent (both in 2004). He is a 2015-6 Marshall Memorial fellow for Greece, and the recipient of the Greek Citi journalistic excellence award (in 2012, the first time the competition was held in Greece).
Outside journalism, he co-authored a play, “Mama Ellada2”, which ran from 2009-2010 in Athens. It was a satire about Greek corruption and the alienation of youth, which attracted strong reviews and widespread international attention, including from the BBC, The Economist, a number of German media, and many others. He was educated at Athens College and Oxford University, where he received a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (first class honours) and a B.Phil. (postgraduate degree) in Philosophy.
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Co-founder, Cognitor AI
Vassilis is a technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the head of technology at Blue Dome Capital, targeting tech transfer and innovation-driven investments in Central and South-Eastern Europe. He has successfully invested in various startups, achieving significant exits, and serves on the boards of several deep tech companies. He co-founded COGNITOR AI, a startup building a novel user authentication system using machine learning and behavioral biometrics. He also co-founded StartSmart South-Eastern Europe and the Hellenic Innovation Network. He teaches entrepreneurship at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and holds degrees from NTUA and MIT.
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Dimitris Papastergiou was born in 1973 in Trikala. He graduated from the Polycladic Lyceum of Trikala and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). At the same time, he attended journalism courses, while he maintains strong ties with technology and the internet, a relationship that was strengthened at the Multimedia Laboratory of NTUA. In 2001 he built and presented, together with a group of his colleagues, the first integrated website for the Prefecture of Trikala, 3kala.gr. Since 2002 he has been practicing the profession of Electrical and Computer Engineer in the city of Trikala. He was involved in studies and construction of private electromechanical projects and the creation of software programs. In 2007 he entered the field of renewable energy and has constructed more than 300 private renewable energy projects. His involvement in the community began in 2002, with his election to the City Council. He was re-elected in 2006, and in 2014 he was elected Mayor of Trikkaion and member of the Board of Directors of KEDE. He was re-elected Mayor in 2019 and, in the same year, he was elected President of the KEDE. He is married to the engineer Soula Brakis and is the happy father of Faye, Kostas and Nikos. From June 2023, he is Minister of Digital Governance in the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
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Evangelos drives the business and R&D strategy at RTsafe. He’s also an Associate Professor of Radiotherapy Medical Physics at University of West Attica, Greece and a research associate at UT Health San Antonio, MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Alexandros Paterakis holds a degree in Computer Engineering and Mathematics from the University of La Verne. He started his career as a Network Engineer and subsequently held positions of responsibility as a senior IT consultant, such as Head of the Consulting Services at MicroAge, Management Consultant in Arthur Andersen (now Accenture) in the UK and then in Greece. In 2003 he served as IT Director at Tellas telecommunications and in 2008 he joined Vodafone where he held the position of CIO. He was then recruited by Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), where he served as President of Infotech Mobility India Pvt Ltd and retired in 2016 as CIO from Saudi Arabia, actively involved in the promotion of transformation in information and communication technologies (ICT). Since 2016 he provides consulting services focusing in digital strategy. Since 2018 he holds the position of CIO at AXIATA Celcom, a telecommunications provider in Malaysia.
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Kyriakos Pierrakakis is the Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports in the Cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Member of the Hellenic Parliament since 2023. He is a computer and political scientist. In 2007 he earned a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and in 2009 a Master of Science in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Athens University of Economics and Business. Currently, he is a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at Heidelberg University. From 2019 to 2023 he served as Minister of Digital Governance. During his tenure, he digitized and simplified government services through the development of citizen-centric digitals platforms such as gov.gr, Greece’s single point of access to government services, digital IDs and driving licenses (Gov.gr Wallet app), and electronic healthcare and prescription records (MyHealth app). As Minister of Education, he aims to build a modern and more inclusive educational system designed to help students unlock their potential. Kyriakos Pierrakakis was born in 1983 in Athens. He is married and has three children. He speaks English and French.
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Adam Provatas is a Greek journalist and author, born in Athens, Greece. Now presenting a daily TV news show, on ‘ERT NEWS’ channel. He has interviewed more than 450 prominent politicians, scientists, writers, and artists like Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Stephen Hawking, Yuval Noah Harari, Joseph Stiglitz, Dario Fo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, John Cleese, Irvin Yalom, John Malkovich. He is an author of 13 books with conversations with renowned Greek Politicians, Political scientists, Historians and Scientists. Some of them: - “Eastern Mediterranean- history and geostrategy of an emerging region”. Conversations with Dimitris Kairidis, Minister of Migration, and Constantinos Filis, Executive Director of the Institute of International Relations. - "Assertive Patriotism”, conversations with Constantinos Filis, Executive Director of the Institute of International Relations. - “From DeCeVo to Drone- Progress and Peace in 21st century”, conversations with Anna Diamantopoulou, President of ‘Diktio’. -“Stories about History” and “Roots and Foundations - Landmarks of the History of Hellenism”. Both books in Conversations with Prof. of history Maria Efthymiou.
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Chief Executive Officer, ResQ Biotech Private Company
Georgios Skretas received his Bachelor’s degree from the School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens (Greece) in 1998 and his PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton University (USA) in 2006. He then worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology of the University of Texas at Austin (USA) (2006-2009). In 2010, he received a Marie Curie International Reintegration Fellowship to return to Greece and establish his independent research group in his home country. During 2010-2022, he served as Head of the Laboratory of Enzyme and Synthetic Biotechnology and the Institute of Chemical Biology of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Greece). Since 2022, he is the Director of the Institute for Bio-innovation at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center "Alexander Fleming" (BSRC Fleming). Georgios Skretas has been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) (2019-2024) and a grant by the European Commission to establish an ERA Chair in Biomolecular Engineering and Synthetic Biology at BSRC Fleming (2023-2027). He is inventor in four (4) patents/patent applications. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ResQ Biotech, a spin-off company applying synthetic biology approaches to advance early-stage drug discovery against diseases caused by protein misfolding.
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Greg Stephanopoulos is the W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at MIT, and Instructor of Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School (1997-). He received his BS degree from the National Technical University of Athens, MS from the U. of Florida and PhD from the U. of Minnesota, all in Chemical Engineering. He taught at Caltech between 1978-85, after which he was appointed Professor of ChE at MIT. The primary focus of his research for the past 3 decades has been on metabolic engineering, the engineering of microbes for the production of fuels and chemicals. He has co-authored or –edited 5 books, more than 450 papers and 60 patents and supervised more than 140 graduate and post-doctoral students. He co-founded the journal Metabolic Engineering, and served as co-editor-in chief and Editorial Board member of 10 scientific journals. He has also been on the Advisory Boards of 5 ChE departments. For his research and educational contributions, Prof. Stephanopoulos has been recognized with numerous awards, such as: Dreyfus award, Excellence in Teaching Award-Caltech, AIChE Technical Achievement Award, PYI from NSF, AIChE-FPBE Division Award, Marvin Johnson Award of ACS, Merck Award in Metabolic Engineering, the R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering of AIChE, Amgen Award in Biochemical Engineering. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2003), Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens (2011) and Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). He has Honorary Doctorate Degrees (doctor technices honoris causa) from the Technical University of Denmark (2005), the National Technical University of Athens (2015) and the Technical University of Dortmund (2019). In 2007 he won the C. Thom Award from SIM and the Founders Award from AIChE and in 2010 the ACS E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry and the George Washington Carver Award of BIO. In 2011 he was selected as the Eni Prize winner for Renewable and non-Conventional Energy. He is an AAAS and AIChE Fellow. He was the 2014 recipient of the 2014 Walker award from AIChE. In 2013 he was awarded the John Fritz Medal of the American Association of Engineering Societies, in 2016 he won the Eric and Sheila Samson $1m Prime Minister Prize (Israel) and was recognized with the Novozymes Prize. Professor Stephanopoulos has served the professional organization of Chemical Engineers as chairman of Division 15, member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the AIChE Society for Biological Engineering. In 2014, he was elected as 2016 President of AIChE. Professor Stephanopoulos has taught undergraduate and graduate courses of the core of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Caltech and MIT and co-authored the first textbook on Metabolic Engineering. He is presently directing a research group of approximately 15 researchers who work on applications of metabolic engineering for the production of natural products, fuels and chemicals.
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computerbasedmath.org
Conrad Wolfram is Strategic Director and European co-founder/CEO of the Wolfram group, recognised as a global thought leader on AI, computational technology and technical education. At the epicentre of computation for 35 years, the Wolfram group drives data science, modelling, maths and automation through its consulting services and technologies, including Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language (and their connection to LLMs such as ChatGPT).
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Vascular surgeon and researcher at MIT on medical AI and data standards. Advisor to the World Wide Web Consortium. Founder of 2 US start ups, one acquired by Nuance (now Microsoft).
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MIT U35
Angelos is the Managing Director of SOTIRIA Technology; a Greece-based technology startup with the aspiration to lead the European development of Artificial Intelligent sensing technology in the Defense and Security industry. He has a Mechanical Engineering background from the National Technical University of Athens and postgraduate studies in Business Administration at Rotterdam School of Management. Angelos has served as Procurement and Sustainability Manager at Anheuser Busch Inbev (ABI), the world’s largest beer producer, with the mandate to lead the sustainability and innovation transformation of the European Supply Chain network. During this period, Angelos initiated the collaboration of ABI with the World Economic Forum’s initiative “Road-Freight Zero” and formed a strategic alliance with the Colruyt Group for the acceleration of the Hydrogen Economy in Europe. Just before ABI he worked as a Supply Chain Engineer at the headquarters of Toyota Motors Europe in Brussels. Angelos was awarded in 2017 the 1st sustainability award by KPMG for his research in the field of intelligent charging of electric vehicles. Since January 2021, he has the honor to serve as an elected member at the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Supply Chain Association. Angelos has been a swimming champion and a member of the Greek National Team. He is a WSET level II certified wine enthusiast
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George Zavvos is a seasoned politician and financial services expert with over 30 years of experience in the European banking and financial services sector. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors and interim CEO of the Hellenic Development Bank (HDB), where he spearheads initiatives to facilitate SMEs' access to financing, promote innovation, and foster the green and digital transformation of Greek businesses. As Deputy Minister of Finance responsible for the financial system (2019 - 2021), he designed, negotiated, and implemented the Hercules Asset Protection Scheme (HAPS), a landmark initiative that played a pivotal role in reducing Greek banks' non-performing loans (NPLs) ratio from 45% in 2019 to 6.8% in 2022. As Bloomberg recently noted, this is "“a magnitude of improvement unsurpassed by the banking industry anywhere”. Hercules enhanced the stability of the Greek financial system and played a key role in the return of the Greek economy to investment grade. In addition, during his tenure, George Zavvos introduced significant reforms in the functioning of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, the Greek capital market, and microfinance, further strengthening the country's financial infrastructure. George Zavvos has also held prominent positions at the European institutions, including: Member of the European Parliament (1990-1994), European Commission Ambassador to Slovakia (1994-1997) and Legal Adviser at the Legal Service of the European Commission (2002-2017). He has been a Professor at the Solvay Business School (ULB) in Brussels (1991-1993) and a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary, University of London (2004-2007). George Zavvos has been awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Economics in Bratislava (2004), and is a Recipient of the Double Cross of the Slovak Republic. /p>