Research team
Constantinos Mourlas
PhD in Computer Science
Constantinos Mourlas is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece) since 2002. He graduated from the University of Crete in 1988 with a Diploma in Computer Science and obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Informatics, University of Athens in 1995. Dr. C. Mourlas joined the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus in 1997 as a visiting Assistant Professor and as Lecturer at the same Department from 1999 till 2002. In 1998 was an ERCIM fellow for post-doctoral studies through research.
Current main research interests: The design and the development of communication environments that provide adaptive and personalized context to the users according to their needs, preferences, cognitive characteristics and emotional state. Also, the use of AI in measuring quality journalism and political communication ideologies.
Personal website: http://helios.media.uoa.gr/mourlas/
Catherine Sotirakou
Journalist & Research Associate (Pre-doc)
Catherine Sotirakou is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of computational journalism at the University of Athens, she holds a master’s in digital media and interactive environments (UoA) and a bachelor’s in journalism (AUTH). She worked for 6 years as a broadcast journalist at Alpha TV, and in 2017 she was awarded a Stavros Niarchos scholarship to study in the Lede Program at Columbia University in the city of New York. After that, she worked as a Tech and Innovation Consultant at Alpha TV and she was responsible for the digital transformation of the television channel. Her project won 3 awards: 2 Ermis Awards (Silver – Content Website, Bronze – UI & Usability) & 1 DIME Award (Gold – Best Responsive or Mobile Edition). Her main research interests are AI for measuring quality in digital news stories, data journalism, audience analysis, and natural language processing.
Christos Gavalas
Journalist & Communications Officer
Christos Gavalas is a digital journalist from Athens. He holds a BA in Business Administration from Athens University of Economics and Business, a MA in Broadcast Journalism from NYU before attending the Lede Program for Data Journalism at Columbia University as a Stavros Niarchos Foundation Fellow. Writer of the first column in the greek magazine history about the Internet at the age of 18, he then worked as an editor at MEGA TV’s digital desk and also at the greek version of Microsoft’s MSN. He has a deep interest in investigative documentaries with specialization in sports, as a member of the Greek Sports Press Association and has produced a long form doc about African soccer migration to Europe which received sponsorship by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Science. He is currently the CNN Greece’s newcast anchor and Web TV manager.
Sotiris Sideris
Journalist
Sotiris Sideris is the co-founder of AthensLive, the first English-language non-profit news outlet in Greece. Since June 2018, he has been working at the Network for Children’s Rights as the coordinator of Migratory Birds newspaper. Previously, Sotiris was producer and researcher for the national TV documentary series 28 Europe. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication & Media Studies from the Panteion University of Athens, and a Master’s degree in New Media & Digital Culture from the University of Amsterdam. In summer 2017, Sotiris was granted a scholarship from Stavros Niarchos Foundation to participate in Lede 12, a post-bac certification program on coding and data analysis from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Department of Computer Science in New York.
Panagiotis Germanakos Ph.D
User Experience Research Expert
Panagiotis Germanakos is currently a User Experience Research Expert at SAP SE (since 2013). He is also Co-founder and Deputy Head of the Semantic and Cognitive Research Adaptivity Technologies (SCRAT) Research Group of the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus (since 2003) and Research Scientist in the Laboratory of New Technologies of the Faculty of Communication & Media Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (since 2004). He was an ERCIM Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Web Applications for the Future Internet Research Group in IIT-CNR (2011-2012) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management and MIS, University of Nicosia (2008-2013). He obtained his PhD in “Web Personalization, Communication Environments: Incorporating Cognitive and Emotional Human Factors” from the University of Athens in 2008 and his MSc in International Marketing Management from the Leeds University Business School in 1999. His B.Sc. was in Computer Science (1998) and also holds a HND Diploma of Technician Engineer in the field of Computer Studies (1996). His research interest is in Human-Computer Interaction, Adaptive Cognitive Systems, Web Personalization – bringing the ‘human-in-the-loop’, User Modeling – encompassing amongst others visual, cognitive and emotional processes, Computational Intelligence.
Antonis Psaltis Ph.D
Interactive Environments
He’s a computer engineer with a long-standing expertise in software development of complete systems for specialized applications. His current research interests are moving towards the fields of Applied Systems of Neurophysiology Value Measurement based on bio-feedback, which give back a sentiment estimation. He is also interested in the level of devotion PC users have in dynamic interactive environments so that content is automatically adjusted.
Ζαχαρίας Λέκκας
PhD Candidate
Counseling Psychology Employee Selection, Training and Assessment e-Learning, e-Assessment Affective Computing, Affective Neuroscience Psychometrics – construction and validation of measurement instruments (questionnaires, tests, and personality assessment) Learning, Training and Development Human Factors PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS
8 Book Contributions
7 Journal Publications
49 Refereed Conferences & Workshops
Maria Boutzeti Ph.D
Raised in Thessaloniki, she studied Communications and Media at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She fulfilled the requirements for the completion of the Masters degree in Digital Communications Media. Today, she is a candidate for a Ph.D on Political Communications and Social Media at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Katerina Mandenaki
Ph.D Candidate
She is a scientific collaborator at the New Technologies, Education and Media Lab of the NTUA since 2017. Her field of expertise is speech analysis with the use of automated methods. She has worked as a scientific collaborator of the Lab at the research program Play2Do – A Simulated Training Framework for Skills Development addressing students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their trainers.
Maria Saridaki Ph.D
She holds a Ph.D from the Department of Communication and Media of UoA, with a specialization on Gaming Interactions and more particularly the capitalization of Digital Games and Interactive Narrations within the education experience of People with Intellectual Disabilities. Other research interests include the different nature of gaming as part of the educational process and creativity and the Gaming Environments.
Anastasia Karabela
Researcher
She is research associate at the Laboratory of New Technologies in Communication, Education and Media of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Graduated from the Department of Communication and Media Studies and the Master’s Program “Digital Communication Media and Interaction Environments” of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The subject of her diploma thesis was the detection of fake news using Machine Learning and big data techniques.
Elina Koutromanou
Researcher
Graduate of the Master’s Degree Programme “Digital Communication Media & Interaction Environments” and of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her thesis analyzed the role of images on social media posts of Non-Government Organizations & proposed a machine learning approach to predict the popularity of an NGO’s post on social media networks based solely on the characteristics of the published images and uses explainability methods to define the most important predictors. Following an internship at the Press and Communication Department of the Bank of Greece, she joined the NGO ELIZA, as a Website and Social Media Manager.
Thodoris Paraskevas
Researcher & Designer
Thodoris Paraskevas is a student of the Master’s degree in “Digital Media and Interaction Environments”
and a graduate of the Department of Communication and Media of the University of Athens, as well as of
the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Technical University of Chalkida. After studying graphic design and 2D animation, Thodoris worked for 20 years as a freelancer on a large number of audiovisual projects. For the last 2 years, he has been working as a research associate at the New Technologies Laboratory of the Department of Communication and Media (UoA). His main research
interests are AI for big data analysis, natural language processing, and ML prediction models.
Nikos Pitsiladis
Member of Workbench Project
Nikos is heading the digital department of one of Greece’s top national TV broadcasters, Alpha TV. Being in the media since 2004, Nikos has worked amongst others for ANT1 TV, The Economist, I Kathimerini and several publications and FTA broadcasters in Greece and abroad. His education includes a Data Science post-bac certification from Columbia University on a scholarship from Stavros Niarchos Foundation, an MA in Media from Newcastle University and accreditations from the Athens University of Economic and Business. He is a certified YouTube expert, being responsible for the buildup and content strategy of a series of channels and an MCN. On his spare time he codes in Python, contributing to machine learning, AI and data visualization projects.
Irene Konstanta
Researcher
Graduate of the Department of Communication and Media and student of the Postgraduate Programme “Digital Media and Interaction Environments”. In her thesis she studies the detection of automated accounts (bots) on Twitter, using Machine Learning techniques and big data processing. Irene has previously worked in the fields of marketing, oral history and documentary production.