Speakers

Prof Mairi Sakellariadou, a distinguished scholar in theoretical physics and cosmology, has an illustrious academic and research career beginning with a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Athens, followed by advanced studies in Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, where she earned a Certificate of Post-graduate Studies and an M.Sc., and was a member of Trinity College and President of Post-graduate students. She furthered her education at Tufts University, USA, acquiring an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Physics. Post-Ph.D., she has contributed to research across prestigious institutions globally, including Université Libre de Bruxelles, Université de Tours, Université Pierre and Marie Curie, Universität Zürich, Université de Genève, and CERN, eventually joining King’s College London in 2005, where she was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics in 2011. She is also editor-in-chief of the journal General Relativity and Gravitation. Her research is mainly focused on searching for new physics through gravitational waves. As such, her work encompasses noncommutative spectral geometry, string/M-theory cosmology, loop quantum cosmology, group field theory and cosmic (super)strings. She is part of the LIGO collaboration and, following the detection of gravitational waves, initiated the EPS gravitational physics division and joined the EPS council. In July 2023, she was elected president of the EPS and subsequently took office in April 2024.

Dimitris Loukas received the bachelor degree from the Physics Department of he University of Athens and his PhD degree from the National Technical University of Athens. He works as research scientist in the National Center of Physical Sciences Demokritos and specialises in the domain of experimental elementary particle physics. He has worked at CERN (Geneva) and the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) of France in Strasbourg.

His research team in Demokritos built part of the experimental apparatus of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. His participation in publications in international scientific journals number more than fifty articles in the subject of radiation detectors and related electronics as well as more than three hundred articles in the subject of the physics of elementary particles.

He has taught at the Open University and in the graduate programme "Physics and Technological Applications" administrated jointly by the the School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences (NTUA) and NCSR Demokritos. He participates yearly in organizing the advanced courses (masterclasses) in the physics of elementary particles for High-school students.

He has had the honour of representing the research society as General Secretary of the society of Greek Researchers (1998-2000) and as President twice (2000-2002, 2009-2011). He has also represented the researchers of Demokritos at the Administrative Council of the centre, for two consecutive periods (2006-2008, 2008-2010) as elected representative. He writes articles regularly on subjects of research policy.

Dr. Vassilios Constantoudis studied physics at the Department of Physics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He then moved to Athens for postgraduate and doctoral studies at the National Hellenic Research Institute (Institute of Theoretical and Physical Chemistry) with a fellowship from the same Institute on the non-linear chaotic dynamics of magnetic systems.

He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at NTUA and NCSR Demokritos (Institute of Microelectronics, IMEL) from 2000 to 2007, participating in many national and European programmes as well as teaching postgraduate courses. In 2001-2004 he also worked as a full-time Professor of Physics and Physics laboratories at ASETEM-SELETE. In 2017 he was elected Senior Researcher at the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (INN) of NCSR Demokritos.

His research work focuses mainly on mathematical modelling and computational methods including Machine Learning techniques in nanometrology, nanoelectronics and nanotechnology, while he has been involved in the study of complex systems such as mass transfer to time dependent media and the mathematical description of correlations in natural language. Also, he has supervised many post-graduate and PhD theses of Departments of NTUA, NTUA and AUTh.

During the period 2016-2019, he was responsible of the Greek participation in the European programme 3DNano: Traceable Nanometrology, while he has participated in several European and National projects. At the SPIE Advanced Lithography: Metrology, Inspection and Process Control conference, his article “Challenges in LER / CDU metrology of DSA structures: placement error and cross- line correlations” was awarded the Diana Nyyssonen Award for Metrology. 

In addition, he supports the ISO system of the Laboratory of Nanotechnology and Microsystems as a quality management officer and he is currently in charge of INN educational committee and participates in the organization of INN activities for science communication (summer schools, science festivals, researcher nights, school visits, etc.). Also, he coordinates the Complex System and Applications Network (COSA-Net) and he participates in the nanoAI network of NSCR-D researchers aiming to bring together information scientists with nanotechnology researchers and explore collaborations. 

He is an Associate Editor of Elsevier's Microelectronic Engineering, Micro and Nano Engineering journals, Hindawi's Mathematical Problems in Engineering and MDPI’s Metrology journal. Finally, he is the co-founder of the spin-off company Nanometrisis p.c. in which he is responsible for product development.

Theo J. Mertzimekis obtained his Bacheror’s degree in Physics from the University of Ioannina in 1993. After graduation he continued his studies at a graduate level at the same University, when later, in 1997, he moved to Rutgers, The State of University of New Jersey on a graduate scholarship to work on fundamental aspects of nuclear structure under Prof. Noemie Benczer-Koller's supervision. He received his MSc in Physics in 1999 and his PhD in Nuclear Physics in 2002. During his PhD work he participated in several experiments in large facilities, such as WNSL at Yale University  and the 88" Cyclotron Lab in UC Berkeley. Following up his graduation, he joined the exotic-beams lab NSCL of Michigan State University as a NSF Research Associate in Prof. Paul Mantica's research group. He stayed at NSCL till 2006 when he returned to Greece performing research work at several institutions, i.e. as a Research Associate and a Visiting Professor at the Univ. of Ioannina (2006-2009) and as a Research Associate at the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP) of NCSR "Demokritos" (2009-2011). Since March 2011 he has been an Assistant Professor (tenured 2015) at the Deptartment of Physics of the University of Athens.

He is a member of international scientific Societies and Associations, the founder of the NuSTRAP research group, the spokeperson of the gPRESPEC consortium at FAIR/GSI and has received partial funding for his research work (NSF, Thalis, FP7-REGPOT etc). His publication records exceeds 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals for work in Nuclear Physics and some 300 from his participation in the CMS collaboration at CERN.