Board of Advisors
Meet our Advisors for the Clinic in Energy, Climate, and Mobility. All advisors operate along with Anthology Ventures Mentorswho are mainly responsible for daily contact with the teams and the coordination of the program
Nikos BABIS, MSc, is Data Innovation Scientist at the Applied Research and Development – Innovation Department at Protergia (Energy and NG Unit), at MYTILINEOS. He leads the internal data science, AI Factory, and cross scientific innovation team, leading Transfer Technology, R&D, and Machine learning tasks, following the internal Innovation Strategy (Protergia Innovation Labs). He also manages various industrial diploma theses and interns for corporate incremental innovation. He is an expert in Data Science and Machine Learning (ML) with additional innovation skills in business modeling. In the past, he worked as a Big Data Scientist at CPERI/CERTH optimizing power plant’s operations, by detecting anomalies/outliers faster and more accurately than before. He also did an internship for 2 summers (2015, 2016) at PPC’s power plant in Kardia, Ptolemaida. He served as a member of the department responsible for the installation and repair of the factory automation and measurement tools. Worked also for 1 year at SIGMIA for software development for retail-related companies. He studied Electrical & Computer Engineering at DUTH and he holds an MSc degree in Data Web Science. from AUTH
Vassilis Nikolopoulos, Ph.D. is an active Deep Tech entrepreneur, corporate executive, investor & mentor, applied researcher and passionate with technology futurology and Technology transfer. In the last 16 years, Vassilis has been working in applied research, technology transfer and innovation management procedures, focusing on the Big Data problems applied to Utilities and the Energy Sector (Smart Grids). He has also worked for years in applied energy behavioral science, data analytics, algorithms and the application of social networks to change human behaviors towards a more sustainable way of living, especially in corporate environments. He co-founded the Deep tech Intelen (an outcome of his PhD at NTUA), one of the most successful startups in the digital energy and utility analytics market, having some big utilities as clients (including Protergia, MYT). He was also one of the two National Climate champions (Greece) of the British Council, taking part in the Global Youth Forum on Climate Finance 2010 in Shanghai. Being an active entrepreneur, applied researcher and passionate with technology futurology, he has cooperated with more than 40 utilities in the USA and Europe, dealing with customer engagement, customer analytics, AI/ML, energy management and deployment of new business models and digital services. He is a guest lecturer in BlockChain at Nicosia University and in Entrepreneurship at Piraeus University, a reviewer at Elsevier and Blockchain technologies (Editorial Board @Frontiers) and serves also as a Scientific expert/Reviewer at the European Commission in H2020. He has global recognitions in top innovation and entrepreneurship contests (US Red herring, SVASE Silicon Valley, Siemens global smartgrid, OECD eco-innovation, CeBIT top cleantech, etc). He is a mentor at the StartupBootamp accelerator and one of the top-100 Global mentors at the Founder Institute (FI). He is the author of one book in Computer Networks, guest speaker in many conferences and futurology events (ie TedX, SAP Digital, Decentralized, PowerUP EIT, etc) and has more than 50 publications in conferences, journals and technology papers. He is a valedictorian Electrical Engineer from Dundee University, Scotland (with two Class medals and the IEE prize) with postgraduate studies at Imperial College, London School of Economics, Ecole Polytechnique (X) and a PhD from National Technical University of Athens. Also took various courses from HarvardX (Harvard University).
Yannis Skoulikaris is an IP professional with more than 40 years of dealing with Information & Communications Technology (ICT). From 1989 to 2019 Yannis has worked in processing computer-implemented inventions with the European Patent Office (EPO). As an EPO examiner, he examined patent applications in the ICT field. As trainer and coach, Yannis has trained and coached generations of EPO examiners as well as Intellectual Property experts in various academic and professional settings. From 2002, as a Director Patent Granting Process, he has managed and supervised the work of examiners in the ICT area, and in the period from 2015 to 2019, he has co-drafted the EPO guidelines for software and emerging technologies patenting as the vice-chair of the guidelines drafting group. During most recent years, drafting was focused on guidelines for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, globally interconnected devices (Internet of Things), blockchain technology, 3D printing, etc. Owing to his managerial and supervisory duties with the EPO, Yannis has developed a double profile, both technical and legal. While conducting comparative studies in examining practice amongst major patent offices (Japanese Patent Office, China National Intellectual Property Administration, Korean Patent Office, United States Patent and Trademark Office), he has gained a global view in the matter. Yannis has also followed a special training as a technically qualified judge for the upcoming European Unified Patent Court with CEIPI (Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies) in Strasbourg. His experience, technical and legal competence, intimate knowledge of EPO examining practice as well as his communicating and teaching skills within a multicultural environment will certainly support your business objectives in the most effective way. Yannis is fluent in English, German, Dutch, and Greek. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of AIPPI, AIPLA, and ICC.
Alexander Deliyannis is a strategy consultant and project manager on sustainability-related communications with 20+ years of professional experience. His track record includes strategic plans, major campaigns, information hubs, and productions ranging from full books to feature-length videos. Alexander has worked with the business, non-governmental, academic, and public sectors, including local authorities and international organizations. With an interdisciplinary understanding of sustainability issues, he has successfully facilitated a multitude of co-creation activities and supported innovative approaches within the context of the projects undertaken. Alexander has an engineering background, holds a Master in Business Administration (Marketing), and is a co-founding partner of the Sympraxis Team agency. In recent years he has focused mostly on international projects in the fields of climate, energy, and urban sustainability.
Nikolaos Nikolopoulos, PhD, is Senior Researcher at the Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH). He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a Ph.D. in the field of Computational Fluid Mechanics. As a postdoctoral researcher at City University of London (CITY), individually granted from the EU as a IEF Marie-Curie Scholarship, he developed distinguished models representing the chemical and flow fields induced in Fluid Catalytic Crackers. As a result of this study CERTH and CITY was awarded one of the three first prizes, in the worldwide competition of ANSYS. He is a co-founder of the spin-off company of CERTH / CPERI, “Clean Energy Ltd.”, and he has significant work experience in the private sector in the field of technical software services. His research activity focuses on the fields of i) Computational Fluid Mechanics, and ii) Process modeling development for the cases of Smart Energy Systems, Renewable Energy Sources, while leading a team of 38 research associates, focusing on the design, development and optimization of energy resource utilization systems and processes, especially by means of mathematical and/or computational modeling. He is Scientific Responsible in European and National programs and has many years of experience in the design, management and implementation of 42 large national and EU research projects. He has a large global collaboration network including universities, research centers, industries, companies and other internationally recognized agencies.
His has a vast record of publications in scientific journals (167) international conferences (24) and books (6) with a significant international recognition (Scopus h-index = 24, excluding self-authoring). He is also reviewer in a number of scientific journals and an evaluator of National and EU research proposals.
Dimitrios Tzovaras, Ph.D., is the Director of Central Directorate and Chairman of the Board of Directors of CERTH since December 2020. Prior to his current position and since October 2013 he was the Director of the Information Technologies Institute of CERTH (CERTH/ITI).
He received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. in 2D and 3D Image Compression from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1992 and 1997, respectively. Before his current position, he was a Senior Researcher on the Information Processing Laboratory at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His main research interests include network and visual analytics for network security, computer security, data fusion, biometric security, virtual reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He is also deeply engaged in applied research aiming at providing innovative solutions in the fields of Energy, Medicine, Industry 4.0, Transport, and Culture.
Dr. Tzovaras has conducted very important scientific and research work (more than 830 publications), which is summarized in 3 books, 202 publications in International Journals with Referees, 57 book chapters, and 571 presentations in International Conferences with Referees. He has also acted as a reviewer of a large number of submitted scientific papers for a plethora of International Journals and Magazines, such as IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, and EURASIP, as well as International Scientific Conferences (ICIP, EUSIPCO, CVPR, etc.). Since 2004, he has been the Associate Editor in the following International Journals: Journal of Applied Signal Processing (JASP) and Journal on Advances in Multimedia of EURASΙP. Also, he is an Associate Editor in the IEEE Signal Processing Letters Journal (since 2009) and a Senior Associate Editor in the IEEE Signal Processing Letters journal (since 2012), while since mid-2012 he has been also an Associate Editor in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing journal. During the period 2007-2009, he has been elected to participate in the group of National Representatives of Greece in the European Commission for the FP7 Programme of International Cooperation.
Since 2000, Dr. Tzovaras is leading the Virtual & Augmented Reality Lab of ITI, whereas he is the main responsible for the Digital Innovation Hub, namely nZEB Smart Home. He has participated with his team in more than 200 Research and Development projects of ITI. During the last 5 years, he has a very large management record having been the project coordinator of 22 projects and the technical/ scientific manager of 18 projects. He is, also, the co-founder of six (6) spin-offs of CERTH/ITI and the coordinator of Mega Project 3, Artificial Intelligence and Simulation Applications of the 4th Generation Technologic Park, ThessInTec.
Interdepartmental Postgraduate Programme program (blockchain technology course).
His main research interests include computer vision, stereoscopic image processing, and signal analysis, linguistics algorithms, web services, semantics, visual analytics, smart grids & energy efficiency, IoT platforms development, and security ecosystems including blockchain, as well as research in ethics and biometrics.
During the last five years, he has been the (co)author of more than 120 papers in refereed journals, edited books, and international conferences. He has served as a reviewer for several technical journals. He has also been involved in more than 30 research projects funded by the EC and the Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, mainly involved as a leader of several WPs, where he had the supervision of a large team of developers and technical teams. He is also currently acting as an Ethics evaluator of running projects executed under the auspices of EC, providing services such as monitoring of research activities performed in projects with respect to assigned ethics requirements. Services are related to the assessment of human participation in real-life trials, privacy-enhancing technologies used for the protection of personal data as well as other ethics issues that shall be tackled within a project lifetime (i.e. dual-use, misuse, and personal sensitive data).