Yannis Tzitzikas

Professor of Information Systems

Yannis Tzitzikas is Professor of Information Systems in the Computer Science Department at University of Crete (Greece) and Affiliated Researcher of the Information Systems Laboratory at FORTH-ICS (Greece). He studied at the University of Crete and he conducted post-doctoral research at (a) the University of Namur (Belgium), (b) ISTI-CNR (Pisa, Italy) and (c) VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. His expertise lies in Information Systems, specifically in Knowledge Management and Information Retrieval. His research focuses on semantic data integration, exploratory search, and digital preservation. He has coauthored 3 books and more than 180 papers in refereed journals and conferences (including ACM Computing Surveys, ACM Transactions on the Web, VLDB Journal, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, JIIS, JDAPD, ECIR, ISWC, EWSC), he has received four best paper awards (at CIA'2003, ISWC'07, MTSR'20 and ISWC'22) as well as other awards). He has supervised three PhDs, 26 MSc theses and more than 50 Diploma Theses. He actively participates το EU projects (totaling more than 1,5 MEuros funding for FORTH-ICS) and participates to the scientific committees of several international conferences and journals. Since 2005 he coordinates the Semantic Access and Retrieval group, and from 2019 also the Centre for Cultural Informatics of the Information Systems Laboratory of FORTH-ICS. He is the coordinator of the Clarity and Open Data Management Team of the University of Crete and he is member of the Executive Committee ERCIM (the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics).

Polyvios Pratikakis

Associate Professor

Polyvios Pratikakis is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Crete, and Collaborating Researcher at ICS-FORTH. His research interests include programming languages, type systems, dynamic and static analysis, parallelism and concurrency, parallel and distributed runtime systems, memory management, and data analytics.

Asterios Leonidis

Assistant Professor

Asterios Leonidis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Crete and Affiliated Faculty at FORTH-ICS. His research lies in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on areas such as Extended Reality (XR), Human-Centered AI, Ambient Intelligence, IoT, and smart cities. He has extensive experience in designing and evaluating interactive technologies for domains including education, accessibility, and cultural heritage, with a strong emphasis on usability, natural interaction, and the societal impact of emerging technologies.

Xenofontas Dimitropoulos

Professor

Xenofontas Dimitropoulos is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Crete. He earned his PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006, where his research, a collaborative effort with the Center for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), led to the creation of the CAIDA: 1) Autonomous Systems (AS) Rank, 2) AS Relationship Dataset, and 3) AS taxonomy. These contributions have since seen widespread use in academia and industry. Following his PhD, he was a Post-Doctoral researcher at IBM Research Zurich Laboratory until 2008, after which he became a Lecturer at ETH Zurich. In 2014, he joined the University of Crete as an Assistant Professor and concurrently became an Affiliated Researcher at the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH). At FORTH, he established and led the Internet Security Privacy and Intelligence Research (INSPIRE) group. Prof. Dimitropoulos's research is centered on applied Internet data analysis, with a particular focus on routing measurements. In 2021, he received a Best Paper Award from ACM SIGCOMM, the flagship inter-networking conference of ACM. He has been the Principal Investigator for three European Research Council (ERC) grants. In 2021, Prof. Dimitropoulos co-founded Code BGP with two members of his research group. This spin-off from FORTH developed an SaaS platform that provided real-time monitoring of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) from hundreds of global sources. Code BGP secured a pre-seed investment from Marathon VC. He served as CEO of Code BGP until its acquisition by Cisco in 2023. The BGP monitoring capabilities of Code BGP have since been integrated into Cisco ThousandEyes, and Cisco has established offices on the campus of FORTH in Heraklion, Greece. Currently, Prof. Dimitropoulos acts as a Scientific Advisor to Cisco ThousandEyes, advising on topics related to BGP monitoring.

Konstantinos Vassakis

Co-Founder of Bizrupt & Assistant Professor

Dr. Konstantinos Vassakis is Assistant Professor of Business Strategy and Innovation at the Department of Management Science and Technology, Hellenic Mediterranean University, and Co-Founder of Bizrupt, a non-profit innovation hub dedicated to cultivating entrepreneurial culture and fostering innovation. His work focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation ecosystems, and venture creation, having designed and led numerous entrepreneurship, incubation, and acceleration programmes. He actively mentors founders and innovators, connects ecosystem stakeholders to accelerate the development of new ventures, and is passionate about helping the next generation transform bold ideas into sustainable impact.

Dimitris Tsingos

CEO of Epignosis & Co-founder of Starttech Ventures

Dimitris Tsingos is the Co-founder and CEO of Epignosis, an international learning technology company serving businesses worldwide through modern, accessible, and highly efficient software products. He is also the Founder and President of Starttech Ventures, a privately owned venture builder and angel investor based in Athens, and the Founder and President of Yodeck, a global digital signage software company. A strong advocate of capital efficiency, lean startup methods, and founder-led growth, Dimitris has played an active role in the Greek and European innovation ecosystem as an entrepreneur, investor, and institution builder. He is the founder of Together for Europe, a pan-European movement advocating for a European Federal Union, and the curator of the Scale-up Greece community. Dimitris studied Computer Science at the University of Crete and also holds an MBA from the Athens University of Economics and Business.

Antonis Peris

Associate Software Engineer

Graduate of BSc and MSc in Computer Science Department from the University of Crete, currently working as an Associate Software Engineer at Epignosis. My primary area of interest is backend software engineering, dedicated to continuous professional development.

Konstantinos Chatzinikolakis

TalentLMS Enterprise Engineering Director

I'm currently leading the Engineering and Product teams at eFront, a learning management system used globally in corporate and academic settings. My background combines software architecture, team leadership, and product strategy, with a focus on scalable systems, developer experience, and continuous delivery. I enjoy mentoring teams on how to turn ideas into impactful, well-engineered solutions and look forward to supporting the next generation of innovators during the hackathon.

Christos Xanthos

Lead Software Engineer

Holding a Computer Science degree. More than 15 years experience in developing internet services, more than 10 years working on and setting e-learning trends. Was having fun coding before Stack Overflow existed - let alone AI chatbots. Stretching agile methodologies to their limits. Latest hobby is getting lost in the labyrinth of modernizing legacy codebases.

Yannis Aikaterinidis

Principal Software Engineer

Yannis Aikaterinidis is a lead software engineer currently leading development efforts in the Growth Squad at Epignosis. He works on features and integrations that support the growth of TalentLMS, contributing as a backend developer across the platform. In the past, his work has focused on core feature development, scalability and efficiency, and team leadership, helping shape the evolution of TalentLMS, one of the leading cloud learning platforms. He holds a Ph.D. from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of the University of Patras, and both B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from the Electronic and Computer Engineering Department of the Technical University of Crete. He is the author of 14 publications in international conferences and journals in the area of distributed computing systems. Previously, he worked as a Software Engineer and Research Engineer in various research programs, bringing deep technical expertise in distributed systems and applied computing. He also served as a Lecturer at the Hellenic Mediterranean University, where he taught and mentored students in core computer science subjects.

Vassilis Poursalidis

Engineering Director

Vassilis is an Engineering Director at Epignosis with more than 20 years of experience and a strong generalist mindset spanning software engineering, architecture, delivery, and organizational leadership. He combines deep technical expertise with a strategic focus on building scalable, resilient, and intelligent platforms. He operates end to end (from designing and developing complex systems to leading teams, shaping engineering culture, and driving transformation at scale), increasingly leveraging AI as a force multiplier. As a modern "full stack generalist", he emphasizes breadth over narrow specialization, systems thinking, and is increasingly focused on how AI can compress the distance between good ideas and working software. He is particularly interested in connecting business needs with technical execution while empowering teams to deliver meaningful impact.