about me
I was born and raised in Volos, in 1969.
In 1986 I moved to Patras for my Diploma studies at the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, at the University of Patras.
In 1991 I moved on to Manchester, to pursue an MSc and then a PhD at (ex-) UMIST.
I am now a Professor in Artificial Intelligence with Hellenic Open University (HOU).
My main research interests are in artificial intelligence at large, especially so in machine learning. My projects have dealt with decision trees, genetic algorithms, neural networks and reinforcement learning, quite often combining those techniques. Applied research with these techniques has also dealt with the development of educational intelligence as well as strategy games. I am also especially keen in investigating how research results can be translated into meaningful learning material and I also enjoy experimenting with software infrastructures for networked communities.
I'm always on the look-out for exploiting my research; in the early 2000s, I also worked as a technical director for a software company.
I have been also involved in most of the efforts to pilot-test collaborative technologies (such as virtual classrooms and portals) and then deploy them at a large scale at the HOU; I'm also deeply interested in educational technology. Other interesting occupations involve:
Member of the Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Society (having also served as Chair and Secretary General),
Member of the Organising Committee of the 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Patras, 2008) and of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (Piraeus, 2012), and co-Chair of the 8th Panhellenic Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Ioannina, 2014),
Evaluation expert for various organisations (including the European Commission, the Corallia Clusters Initiative, various agencies of the Greek State, other national/regional agencies in Europe, etc.)
Quite some time ago, I also worked as an R&D engineer for a research institute.
I love programming.