Speakers

Ioannis Anastasiou
Vice Governor of Digital Governance and Citizen Services for the Region of Thessaly

I am the Vice Governor of Digital Governance and Citizen Services for the Region of Thessaly, Greece. In this capacity, I’m passionate about transforming my region through innovative digital solutions. I’m also dedicated to leveraging technology to streamline processes and make them more user-friendly for all residents and visitors of Thessaly. My ultimate objective is to help bridge the gap between citizens engagement and government. As a professional journalist and member of the Editors' Union of Thessaly, I had been MEGA Channel's correspondent in Magnesia from 2000 to 2010. Until the fall of 2015, I worked for the TRT TV channel, where I was a commentator and presenter of the news bulletins, while for a decade, I presented the weekly TV show, "No Krypton". From 2002 to the summer of 2008, I was responsible for ASTRA TV channel's News Department, the presentation of newscasts, and the station's central news bulletin. From 1991-1995, I was a Parliamentary Editor, as the first Media Correspondent of the Region, by participating in the daily briefing of the political editors. I have worked in other newspapers (Proti and Thessalia) and radio stations, I have journalistically covered EU summits in Corfu and Amsterdam, and I have also participated in journalistic missions in Brussels, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Cairo, and Skopje. Today, I am the Editor-in-Chief of "istigmes.gr", where I present the informative program of Radio VERA, "No Krypton”. I also teach journalism at the Public IEK of Volos. During the 2004 Olympic Games, I was the Head of the Press Center of "Athens 2004" at the Panthessalian Stadium of Volos. I am one of the authors of the "Cultural Mediterranean" proposal and of the preparation of the first bid file for the Mediterranean Games of Volos and Larissa in 2013. I have also drawn up, on behalf of OLB, the study for the "Branded Thematic Cruise" from the port of Volos with the title, "Argonautic Campaign". I have presented scientific papers / presentations at the 2nd Panhellenic Branding Marketing Conference in Larissa in 2017, the 2nd Cultural Heritage Digitization Conference in Volos, and the 5th Panhellenic Conference of the Department of Planning and Regional Development, School of Engineering, of the University of Thessaly in 2018. I have also been politically active, as in 2012, when I was a PASOK candidate for parliament, and in 2015, when I was the head of the ballot of the Democratic Alliance in Magnesia. I am married to Asimina Ceglia, with whom I share our 28-year-old son, Theodoris.

Professor Chrysi Laspidou
Dept. of Civil Engineering, Vice-Rector of Innovation, Internationalization, Collaborations & Digital Governance

Mrs. Laspidou is a Professor at the Civil Engineering Department, University of Thessaly in Greece. I am the Vice-President of Collaboration at Water Europe and a member of the Steering Committee of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Knowle dge Action Network at Future Earth . The Chair of the COST Action NEXUSNET project ARSINOE and the coordinator of the H2020 , I have spent 15 years in the USA, where I conducted all my studies and obtained my degrees from reputable institutions. I have published over 70 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings and my work is widely recognized with currently about 3700 citations, according to Google Scholar

Dionysios Diamantopoulos
Staff Research Scientist at the Hybrid Cloud Research Dept. of IBM Research Europe

Dionysios Diamantopoulos is a Staff Research Scientist at the Hybrid Cloud Research department of IBM Research Europe. His research interests include computational storage systems, transprecision & near-memory computing, and energy-efficient heterogeneous systems for hybrid cloud and AI. Over the years he has had the opportunity to work on multiple cutting-edge IBM and EU projects, such as dynamic-precision accelerators and co-processors for POWER architecture, near-memory hardware accelerators for weather modeling & DNA sequencing/alignment, accelerators for the fintech industry in the cloud and cache-coherent accelerators for neural networks.
He was the leader of the internal IBM challenge for domain-specific acceleration on the cloud with disaggregated FPGAs. Currently, he is leading the efforts to develop advanced AI/ML techniques coupled with computational storage enablement in IBM FlashSystems and IBM FlashCore Modules for enhanced cybersecurity. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from ECE/NTUA, Greece, and a D.Eng. from CEID/Patras University, Greece. His research is disseminated in more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. He has also filed over ten patents and received one plateau invention award. He has served as a researcher on eight projects from the EU and three from ESA, and as a TPC member and reviewer in numerous international conferences and journals. He is a member of HiPEAC, IEEE, IEEE CAS, OpenPOWER, and the Technical Chamber of Greece.

Alexander Ypma
Data & Analytics Line Manager at ASML, The Netherlands

Alexander Ypma received a PhD degree from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 2001 on the topic Learning Methods for Machine Vibration Analysis and Health Monitoring. He continued on the topic of Bayesian Machine Learning and studied applications in web-mining, sales forecasting and audiology. After several research positions he moved in 2011 to lithography equipment manufacturer ASML. Initially working as On-Product Overlay engineer, he moved into a Data Science Architect role and has set up the Technical Competences of Applied Data Science and Data Engineering. In 2019 he moved into a position as Group Lead, where he is currently leading a group of 22 professionals in the area of Data Science & Data Engineering, specializing on Predictive Maintenance & Diagnostics. Group activities include development of Predictive Maintenance applications, lithography scanner performance monitoring, Diagnostic Reasoning and Machine Learning Operations. He has contributed to 12 journal articles & book sections, over 20 conference publications, 2 popular magazine articles and holds 32 patents.

George Varvarelis
Global Engineering Director, Sense and Act @ CNH

George is a farmer and an engineer. He did his Master's in Robotics and then started his Ph.D. in computer vision related to precision agriculture. He spent a few years in the defense industry before becoming the founder and CEO of Augmenta in 2016. Having driven tractors for thousands of hours, he is laser-focused on providing smart and affordable solutions that can truly cover the farmers’ needs and can be adopted by all regardless of the size of their operations. His vision is a profitable and rewarding future for the farmers and their families.

Dimitris Garagounis
Founder, Oliveex P.C.

Dimitris Garagounis is founder of Oliveex, a VC-backed startup working on industrial digital transformation. He is currently leading operations, customer success, and expansion. He has engineering experience on Internet-of-Things, ultra-low power embedded devices, and Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs). Dimitris has worked in system-level programming, embedded firmware development, low-power communication protocols, low-power hardware designs, and embedded systems power consumption optimization.

Dionysis Bochtis
founder of farmB Digital Agriculture S.A & farmB Labs Ltd.

Dr Dionysis Bochtis is the founder of farmB Digital Agriculture S.A. and farmB Labs Ltd., with a research focus on systems engineering for agricultural production, ranging from ICT-enhanced systems to fully automated, robotized solutions. He currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Bio-economy and Agri-technology (IBO) at the Center for Research and Technology (CERTH), sits on the CERTH Board of Directors, and holds affiliated professorships at the University of Lincoln (UK) and Aarhus University (Denmark). With over 350 publications, including 150 journal articles and 15 books, Prof. Bochtis has coordinated numerous research projects and supervised more than 20 PhD students. He has held leadership roles in international agricultural engineering organizations such as CIGR, CIOSTA, and EFITA.

Dimitra Gkorou
Data & Analytics Line Manager at ASML, The Netherlands

Dimitra Gkorou is a Machine Learning expert and group lead at ASML focusing on AI for yield optimization, control, and diagnostics. Her contributions resulted in innovation distinctions within ASML, several patents, and publications. Her interests are on the intersection of Machine Learning and Physics, particularly, control, human in the loop, robust machine learning, and federated learning. She holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology and a MSc from Computer Engineering and Informatics (CEID) of University of Patras.

Evangelos Hristoforou
Professor, National TU of Athens, Greece

Evangelos Hristoforou received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the University of Patras in April 1984. In Septmeber 1986 he joined the R&D dept of “Peaudouce SA”. In September 1987 he joined King’s College, University of London, enrolled in the MPhil/PhD degree in the field of magnetic sensors with a Peaudouce SA scholarship. In September 1991 he was awarded the PhD degree from the University of London in the field of “Array Sensors Based on Amorphous Alloys”. From January 1991 till April 1994 he served as Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos”, Greece, working in the field of materials and sensors design and calibration. In April 1994 he was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Technological and Educational Institution (TEI) of Chalkis, Greece, where he became Professor in the same field in November 1998. In November 1999 has was elected as Assistant Professor of Electronic Materials in the School of Mining and Metallurgy Engineering, National TU of Athens and Professor in the same field in November 2011. In March 2016 was elected Professor of Electronic Materials and Diectror of the Sensors Lab at the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, National TU of Athens. He has supervised 32 PhD students, more than 60 Master Theses and more than 180 final year theses in NTUA. He is actively related to industries towards the realization of magnetic non-destructive methods for predicting cracks in magnetic steels. He is the President of the Hellenic Society of Nan-destructive Testing. He has organized 9 international conferences and several Webinars and Special Issues in Journals. He is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece and a member of the IEEE. He has published more than 200 papers in international journals (ISI), and more than 50 papers in international conferences; he has given more than 50 invited presentations in international conferences and he has an h-index of 31 in Scopus and 36 in Google Scholar.

Georgios Flamis
Senior Engineering Manager – Edge AI systems, DLG/EP/EPBD/EPBD8, Renesas Design Center - Greece

Georgios over multiple years performs with sustained and consistent technical excellence in system / product design. With experience in embedded hardware and software, he has been positioned in critical roles for design wins in key customers’ products, including development of product requirements together with product management/marketing and system architecting. He has strong background in digital signal processing and machine learning technologies. He holds two international patents and number of research publications. He is also acting as Member of Technical Staff at Renesas CTO office.

Georgios Keramidas
Assistant Professor, Aristotle University / Consultant at Think Silicon, An Applied Materials Company

Georgios Keramidas received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras in 2008. Since 2019, he is an Assistant Professor at the School of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Prior to his appointment as a faculty member, he worked for almost 11 years in industry as the Chief Scientific Officer of Think Silicon S.A. in which he participated in the design of the architecture of the company's multi-core GPUs. He was also responsible for managing funded projects and for managing the company's patent portfolio. Mr. Keramidas continues to work for the company as a technology and innovation consultant focusing on new products and on expanding the patent portfolio. He participated in more than 15 funded research projects, either as coordinator, technical coordinator, or as principal investigator. He is currently in charge of a privately funded project and leads a team of 4 PhD candidates and 10 graduate/postgraduate students. His research interests include design and modeling of low-power processors and memory systems, multi-core/multi- threaded processors, graphics and artificial intelligence accelerators, and compiler optimizations. He has co-published 110+ scientific papers in international conferences and journals, three book chapters and holds 16 patents (12+ patents are under evaluation). His work has received over 1500 citations (h- index: 18, i10-index: 30). He received a best paper award, a Technology Transfer award and an “Outstanding reviewer.” Mr. Keramidas has been co-program chair of 4 international conferences (FPL'21, ISVLSI'21, ARC 2018, ARC 2023) and is a regular member of the Technical Committee of several conferences (DATE, FPL, ISVLSI, ARC, SAMOS, CITS, CCCI, ISQED). He is a regular expert and innovation consultant in the European Union in EIC (European Innovation Council) programs, a regular evaluator in magazines related to his subject and a member of the European Network of Excellence HiPEAC

Manolis Frantzeskakis
CEO Argosemi

Dr Manolis Frantzeskakis has a multi-decade experience in the wireless communications and the semiconductor industries. He has served in various technical, managerial and executive roles. He has been instrumental on the development and launching of the first Fixed Wireless Access products in Intracom Telecom, Greece. He has founded Hermes Technologies SA that made the world-first demonstration of Wi-Fi beamforming technology in 2003, a company that was merged with Athena Semiconductors SA in 2004 and subsequently acquired by Broadcom. In Broadcom, he has contributed to the development and productization of numerous RF IC products in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, FM/DAB and NFC markets, among which the world’s first BLE IC that found its way to the market. Also, he pioneered in the development of innovative Digital PLL technology, providing an edge to many IC products in Broadcom.
He is the founding CEO of Argo Semiconductors SA, a company offering consulting services on RF subsystem prototyping and RF IC development, also developing and marketing active antenna technology for 5G sub-6GHz systems, an activity selected to be funded by the European Innovator Council (EIC) Accelerator fund in July 2024. Dr. Frantzeskakis holds a BS degree on Information Science and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras and a PhD degree on Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the author of many academic journal and conference papers, as well as the inventor of more than ten patents.

Nikolaos Sketopoulos
Co-Founder of Silicon Highway Technologies

Dr. Nikolaos Sketopoulos earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Thessaly, Greece, in 2021. Since 2014, he has been a Research Associate at the Circuits and Systems Lab of the University of Thessaly. Nikolaos received a Ph.D. studies fellowship from the University of Thessaly, a DEKA Grant in 2019, and the first-place award in the ACM TAU 2020 timing analysis contest. In 2022-2023 he was a lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2023, he became Co-Founder of Silicon Highway Technologies, G.P. The company's business includes integrated circuits physical design and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools implementation.

Paraskevas Bakopoulos
Director of NVIDIA Greece

Paraskevas Bakopoulos leads the Photonic Systems group at NVIDIA Greece (formerly Mellanox Greece). Previously, he was a senior researcher at the National Technical University of Athens, where he worked on a wide range of photonics-enabled technologies for applications in HPC and datacenter networks, focusing primarily on high-speed optical interconnects and optical switching. He has published over 170 papers and holds more than 50 patents. He sits on the Photonics 21 Board of Stakeholders and has served as a TPC member for the OFC conference. He received a Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering (2003) and a PhD in Photonics (2010) from the National Technical University of Athens

Tilemachos Matiakis
Technical director Kenotom

Tilemachos graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2004 and earned his PhD in Control and Automation from the Technical University of Munich in 2009. During his academic career, he published several papers in prestigious scientific journals and conferences, accumulating over 250 citations to date. Afterward, he worked as a control engineer in the aerospace and automotive industries and as a software developer for retail applications until 2013. In 2014, he co-founded KENOTOM, where he has held various leadership positions as the company expanded to over 200 employees by 2024.

Sotirios Bekos
Managing Director at QUBBER EYE Q

Experienced Technology Specialist with research interest and work field in the Automation Industry, specialized in Design of Control Systems, SCADA, HMIs, process automation and Industrial Inspection Systems. As a continuation of my concerns for finding new, innovative solutions in the field of Industry, I decided to establish QUBBER, a Technology Company founded in 2005. QUBBER specializes in the design and construction of integrated Machine Vision systems for in-line quality control of several products on production lines.
In our Company we seek the challenges, and we challenge the established ones! So, we created QUBBER EYEQ, an innovative holistic platform, which lies at the heart of our systems. The technological perfection of our inspection systems combined with high cost- benefit ratio and relationship of trust that we cultivate with our customers are very important to us
To ensure the quality of the products, to reduce the production costs and above all to protect your brand name, choose us!

Yiorgos Bontzios
Chief Commercialization, Agroverse

Yiorgos is co-founder of Agroverse, a startup company offering robots as a service in agriculture. He is also a passionate supporter of the Greek startup ecosystem serving as a mentor in many accelerators.

Dr Sotiris Bantas
President & CEO, Centaur

Dr Sotiris Bantas is a serial entrepreneur and technologist with extensive experience in IoT, semiconductor design, and AgTech. As the Founder and CEO of Centaur Analytics, he leads the development of the Internet-of-Crops® ecosystem, a pioneering platform for supply chain sustainability that integrates intelligent IoT sensors and AI-driven analytics. Under his leadership, Centaur has secured investments from global venture capital firms and strategic partners, and has established its technology in over 25 countries worldwide. Before Centaur, Sotiris co-founded Helic Inc., where he served as CTO and spearheaded the development of RF and high-speed IC design solutions used by industry giants like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple. Helic was acquired by ANSYS in 2018, marking a record exit for a deep-tech company founded in Greece. Sotiris holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. A prolific inventor, he holds 12 patents in sensors, AgTech, and electronic design automation, with additional patents pending. He actively mentors startups and serves as Vice President of the Hellenic Emerging Technologies Industry Association, while also advising the Greek government on innovation.