The Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) is the only research centre in Northern Greece and one of the largest in the country being founded in 2000. It is a legal entity governed by private law with non-profit status, supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. CERTH has important scientific and technological achievements in many areas including: Energy, Environment, Industry, Mechatronics, Information & Communication, Transportation & Sustainable Mobility, Health, Agro-biotechnology, Smart farming, Safety & Security, as well as several cross-disciplinary scientific areas. From CERTH, Information Technologies Institute (ITI) and Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) will participate in order to fulfil the objectives of INSULAE. These are outlined in details in the next paragraphs.
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Information Technologies Institute
The Information Technologies Institute (ITI) was founded in 1998 as a non-profit organisation under the auspices of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development, with its head office located in Thessaloniki, Greece. Since 10/03/2000 it is a founding member of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) also supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT).
CERTH/ITI is one of the leading Institutions of Greece in the fields of Informatics, Telematics and Telecommunications, with long experience in numerous European and national R&D projects. It is active in a large number of research domains such as Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Security and Surveillance, Image and Signal Processing, Computer & Cognitive Vision, Human Computer Interaction, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Multimedia, Database and Information Systems and Social Media Analysis.
CERTH/ITI has participated in more than 175 research projects funded by the European Commission (FP5-FP6-FP7 & H2020) and more than 100 research projects funded by Greek National Research Programmes and Consulting Subcontracts with the Private Sector (Industry). The last three years, the Information Technologies Institute has attracted an income of more than 25.5 M€ from National and European competitive R&D projects. For the last 10 years, the publication record of ITI includes more than 270 scientific publications in international journals, more than 600 publications in conferences and 100 books and book chapters. These works have been cited in more than 6.500 times.
With respect to this project, the Information Technology Institute exhibits substantial research activity as well as technology transfer actions, and employs a high quality scientific group in the area of multi-sensorial and energy related systems, the development of simulation platforms and visual analytics for highly complex systems. It participates in research networks with assorted institutes and industrial partners in Greece and Europe and is in the process of establishing a spin-off company, to commercially exploit the research results (already available as prototypes) of the Laboratory. The Information Technologies Institute exhibits also substantial research activity in the area of virtual, augmented and mixed realities where included modeling and simulation of complex virtual environments, haptic force feedback applied research, 3D modelling and compression, deformable objects and cloth modelling, collaborative virtual environments, new sensor development for head/hands/body tracking, multimedia analysis/synthesis, gesture recognition, head motion modelling and tracking, advanced applications of virtual/augmented/mixed reality in education and training, e-health, assistive technologies, culture, industry and e-business.
Concluding, CERTH/ITI has high experience in the topics and objectives of this project. CERTH/ITI (Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras) was the coordinator of the FP7-ICT (CP) Adapt4EE “Occupant Aware, Intelligent and Adaptive Enterprises” and FP7-ICT (CP) INERTIA “Integrating Active, Flexible and Responsive Tertiary Prosumers into a Smart Distribution Grid”, in which it was leading the human presence and movement analysis activities in controlled enviroments (e.g. buildings, factory shopfloors etc.) as well as the development of Demand Side Management strategies, potential role and applications for the aggregator, energy monitoring of tertiary buildings through distributed multi-sensor installations and visual analytics and data mining technics.
Moreover, it is participating in H2020-ICT (IA) VICINITY “Open virtual neighbourhood network to connect intelligent buildings and smart objects”, H2020-EE (IA) enCOMPASS “Collaborative Recommendations and Adaptive Control for Personalised Energy Saving”, H2020-LCE (IA) inteGRIDy “integrated Smart GRID Cross-Functional Solutions fot Optimized Synergetic Energy Distribution, Utilization & Storage Technologies” and H2020-EE (RIA) GreenSoul “Eco-aware Persuasive Networked Data Devices for User Engagement in Energy Efficiency”, extending and applying expertise on energy consumption modelling privacy-aware microlocation tracking within buildings, forecasting, DR prediction, flexibility analysis, developing data and visual analytics engines.
In addition, through the participation in the FP7-ICT (CSA) Ready4SmartCities “ICT Roadmap and Data Interoperability for Energy Systems in Smart Cities” and H2020-EeB (CSA) SWIMing “Semantic Web for Information Management in Energy Efficient Buildings” projects, CERTH/ITI has gained substantial experience in energy data interoperability, semantics, ontologies and linked data in the wider smart-cities concept.
Finally, both Institutes act as Innovation manager in the recently EU funded project of Smart Cities and Communities named as IRIS “Integrated and Replicable Solutions for Co-Creation in Sustainable Cities”, supporting the investigation and replication of innovative technologies promoting the application of smart RES solutions in different districts of the 3 lighthouse cities of Utrecht (NL, Project Coordinator), Gothenburg (SE) and Nice Côte d’Azur (FR) and the 4 Follower Cities of Vaasa (FI), Alexandroupolis (GR), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ES), and Focsani (RO). IRIS ambition is to unlock the intelligence of communities by co-creating elegant action in a sustainable Europe. IRIS is organized around 5 key challenges, referred as Transition Tracks, focusing on (i) Energy Positive Districts, (ii) Smart Energy Management, (iii) Smart e-Mobility, (iv) a digital integrated City Innovation Platform and (v) Citizen Engagement and Co-creation.
Dr. Konstantinos Votis
Researcher Grade Β’
Dr. Konstantinos Votis is a computer engineer and a senior researcher (Researcher Grade Β’) at Information Technologies Institute/Centre for Research and Technologies Hellas (CERTH/ITI) and Director of the Visual Analytics Laboratory of CERTH/ITI.
He is also a Visting professor at the De-montfort University in UK in the filed of Human Computer Interaction, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR). He received an MSc and a Ph.D. degree in computer science and service oriented architectures from Computer Engineering and Informatics department, University of Patras, Greece. Also he holds an MBA from the Business School department in the University of Patras.
His research interests include Human Computer Interaction (HCI), information Visualisation and management of big data, knowledge engineering and decision support systems, Internet of Things, cybersecurity as well as pervasive computing, with major application areas such as mHealth, eHealth, and personalized healthcare. His PhD was in the domain of service Oriented Architecture and Information management systems in the einclusion and healthcare. Since 2001 he has published more than 100 international scientific articles on eHealth, mhealth, human-technology interaction visualisation (AR, VR, information visualisation with visual analytics), mobile and ambient technologies as well as human-centred design, etc.
Since 2001, Dr. Votis has participated in 29 Research and Development projects in the fields of HCI, IoT, information Visualisation and data analytics, personal health systems, cybersecurity, blockchain, Ambient Assisted Living, e-Inclusion and big data: of which 24 are funded by the EC (6 H2020, 11 FP7 ICT, 1 FP6 IST STREP, 4 FP5 IST, 2 structural/cross border), 2 are funded by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, 2 are cross border, and 1 is subcontract from the industry), acting both as Scientific Responsible and as the Technical Coordinator of the whole European consortium (technical coordinator of the project in 3 projects - 1 FP7 ICT, 1 H2020, and 1 Greek National project).
Dr. Votis has strong expertise in managing EU and national projects especially in the ara of IoT, cybersecutiy, mHealth, as he was the technical coordinator of FP7 NoTremor, CaregiversPROMMD H2020, deputy coordinator myAirCoach H2020 (mHealth and self management), Greek pilot Leader and WP leader in Large scale IoT project ACTIVAGE in the Active and Healthy Ageing.
Segkouli Sofia
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Segkouli Sofia received the degree of Diploma Greek Philology from the Aristoteleio University, the department of Greek linguistics, in 1997. In 2005, she joined the Institute Informatics and Telematics as a researcher participating in numerous projects. Currently she is a member of the Visual Analytics Laboratory of CERTH/ITI and a senior researcher in the field of Healthcare for elderly, Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas. Dr Segkouli Sofia has an active role in Ethics and emerging technologies (e.g. IoT, AI) in European projects. Recently she has been assigned the role of ethics expert in the development of a European Framework for ICT Professionals in all sectors (e-competence framework).
Dr Andreas Triantafyllidis
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Andreas Triantafyllidis is research associate at the Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology – Hellas (CERTH-ITI). He has been trained as postdoctoral researcher in mobile health with the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford from 2013-2015. His research interests include medical informatics, pervasive computing, personalised healthcare, physical activity, and computerised decision support. During the last 11 years, he has been involved in several EU and UK NHS-funded projects (e.g., PATHway, REMOTE, SUPPORT-HF), leading in the design, development and evaluation of novel computerised systems toward achieving patient independent living, better health self-management, and improved clinical outcomes. His research has attracted national and international grants, received best paper awards in international conferences (International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence 2011, MobiHealth 2010), and has been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as the International Journal of Medical Informatics and the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. His research has been covered in Tech Talks Central (2014), OxfordMail (2015) and Deutsche Welle (2016).