Curriculum Vitae

(the professional, sorter and much less interesting version can be found here)

I was born and raised in Kavala, Greece 11/11/1982. I received my -greek- grade school and high school education there, and studied German and English as foreign languages. I received my high-school certificate which allowed me to enter some of the best department in the Greek universities, as well as the Zertifikat  "Deutsch als Fremdsprache" from the Goethe Institut, and the certificate of "Proficiency in English" from the University of Cambridge.

18 years later, I had to move to Thessaloniki to carry on my studies there as a student in the department of Applied Informatics in the University of Macedonia. I started my BSc there in September of 2000 and finished four years later. My thesis was a comparison of the energy consumption of different shorting algorithms on an ARM processor. Most important part of this project was the experience I gained working under the leadership of my very close friend Dimitris  Andreou supervised by Dr Alexander Hatzigeorgiou in the E.A.S.Y. project.

In this four years, I had the opportunity to enlarge my scientific and personal horizons. I took general computer science, finance and management courses, and through my optional courses I specialized in the subjects of Computational Mathematics, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence, Networks and Macro-Economics. Although the latter was a subject with little relevance to my other specializations, it was not a coincidence. I enjoyed my macro-economics courses and throughout my research journey, I feel that all the scientific milestones I have encountered, can and should be applied in the macro-economics field.

Although I met some excellent academics during these four years there were some outstanding figures. I cannot but thank once more my supervisor Dr Alexander Hatzigeorgiou as well as Dr Ioannis Refanidis for their guidance and Drs Anastasios Katos and Konstantinos Margaritis for their impact on my personality.

Reaching the end of my studies I started exploring my MSc opportunities. My first thought back then was to specialize in Computer Networks. However deep inside me I felt I hadn't find what I was looking for, and therefore once I encountered my first A.I. courses I asked my Lecturer, Dr Ioannis Refanidis, for advice. He was determined both for my abilities and the possible opportunities of the field and he persuaded me to apply for the MSc in Artificial Intelligence in University of Edinburgh. So far I am really happy about that choice and I cannot but express once more my gratitude to him for changing my life.

I started my MSc the same year I finished my BSc, in September of 2004. I was interested in applied Artificial Intelligence and therefore I chose the specializations of Intelligent Robotics (primary) and Learning from Data (secondary). The courses I took there where both interesting and challenging and if I had to pick my favorites, these would be without any doubt Probabilistic Models and Reasoning, Machine Learning and Advanced Vision.

My MSc thesis title was "Visual Object Class Recognition" and regarded the application of data mining techniques on a computer vision problem.

Edinburgh had a big impact on my life, once it was the first time I lived abroad. Furthermore, throughout this MSc I decided that research is what I want to do in my life. In this choice the greatest role played three of my professor. My supervisor Dr Chris Williams, as well as Drs Sethu Vijayakumar and Amos Storkey. Their guidance, lectures and way of life, helped me re-establish my goals, and alter my perspective of life.

My home city of Kavala

My home island of Thassos

Thessaloniki - The city I did my undergraduate studies

I took my MSc degree in Edinburgh