February 10, 2023
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science was adopted in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and is celebrated on 11 February every year to promote the full and equal access and participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.
On this day, the Institute if Informatics & Telecommunications of NCSR Demokritos, honours female researchers’ achievements and supports gender equality & female empowerment in Science.
Get to know our researchers and the valuable work they conduct through these short biographies.
#WomenInScienceDay #WomenInScience
- Kalliopi Papamanoli
Dr. Kalliopi Papamanoli holds a degree in Philosophy from the Department of Philosophical and Social Studies (FKS) of the University of Crete, where she specialised in Philosophy and a PhD in Ancient Greek Philosophy (thesis title: “Drama and dialectic in Plato’s Protagoras”) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (NCSR Demokritos) and at the Department of of Philosophical and Social Studies of the University of Crete.
She has also taught philosophy as an academic scholar at the Department of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the Department of Primary Education of the University of Thessaly. Her work in the field of philosophy has been published in articles, books and translations, and she actively participates in conferences and workshops, as well as in research projects that concern not only the field of ancient philosophy but also the contemporary stream of Philosophy for Children (P4C). Finally, he is a member of the Philosophical Research and Translation Laboratory of the Department of FKS of the Centre for Research & Studies of the University of Crete.
- Anastasia Krithara
Dr. Anastasia Krithara has been a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications at NCSR “Demokritos” since October 2008. She is a member of the Software and Knowledge Engineering Laboratory (SKEL), and the head of the Biomedical and Health Informatics Team (BioHIT). Before, she was a research engineer in Xerox Research Centre Europe, in Grenoble, France, where she carried out research in the area of machine learning. She holds a BSc in Computer Science from Athens University of Economics and Business, an MSc in Machine Learning and Data Mining from University of Bristol and a PhD in Machine Learning from Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI). Her research interests include Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, Bioinformatics, Knowledge Engineering and Natural Language Processing. She is program committee member of several international conferences and workshops and her work has been published in international journals, conferences and books. She is involved in many European and national research projects and she has the technical coordinator role in some of them. In particular, she was the depute coordinator of the FP7 project BioASQ and she is currently the technical coordinator of the H2020 project iASiS. She has supervised more than 25 student theses and internships the last 10 years. She is teaching postgraduate courses and she has co-organised the International Research-centered Summer Schools (IRSS-2013 and IRSS-2014), the Athens Natural Language Processing Summer Schools (AthNLP 2019 and AthNLP 2020), as well as the BioASQ challenges and workshops. She is the general secretary of the Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Society (EETN) for 2019-2020.
- Maria Dagioglou
Dr. Maria Dagioglou is a post-doc researcher at Roboskel, the robotics activity of SKEL, the AI lab, leading the Human-Robot Collaboration track of research. She studied Electrical and Computer Engineering (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, 2007). She holds a MSc in Biomedical Engineering (TU Delft, the Netherlands, 2010) and a PhD in Psychology (University of Birmingham, UK, 2014). Since April 2014, she has been a research associate at NCSR-D assuming team member roles in national and EU projects. Between 2018-2021, she was a Stavros Niarchos Foundation industrial Post-Doc fellow working on robotics applications for Human-Robot Collaboration at shared workspaces. Her research interests include the development of AI methods, as well as the understanding of human behavior, for safe, transparent and fluent Human-Robot Collaboration.
- Denia Kanellopoulou
Dr. Denia Kanellopoulou holds a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MSc in Management and Economics of Telecommunication Networks and a PhD in Wireless Telecommunications both from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Since 2009, she has been working in research, engineering and management roles in Greece (NCSR Demokritos, HEDNO, etc.) and in Europe (ESA, University of Luxembourg). Currently, she is nurturing the application of breakthrough technologies to business innovation as an Innovation Services Specialist at ahedd Digital Innovation Hub.
- Dora Katsamori
Dr. Dora Katsamori holds a BA in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Athens, where she was specialized in the field of International and European Studies, a Master degree in Social Discrimination, Migration and Citizenship and a PhD in the field of citizenship and adult education from the University of the Peloponnese. She also holds a teaching certification and she is a certified adult educator of non-formal education. She has a long experience as project coordinator and researcher in European and national funded projects. She is currently working as post-doctoral researcher within the Software and Knowledge Engineering Laboratory (SKEL) of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) at the National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos.
- Lida Arnellou
Dr. Lida Arnellou holds a BA in Public Administration from Panteion University and a PhD in Science Communication, from the University of Peloponnese. She has worked for eight years as a Researcher in projects concerning science education, informal education (ex. museums) and the public image of science in the media. From 2007 to 2018 she has worked at Eugenides Foundation, mainly as Coordinator of the Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition. She is currently working in projects concerning the development of interactive exhibitions, advanced digitisation for cultural heritage, informal education and Science Communication at SKEL The AI Lab, NCSR Demokritos.
- Sofia Bakogianni
Dr. Sofia Bakogianni received the Diploma degree in electrical and computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 2007, the M.Sc. degree in microelectronics-optoelectronics from the University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece, in 2010, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer science from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 2018. Her research interests include antenna design and measurements, antenna reconfigurability, textile antennas, wireless telemetry, RF/microwave circuits, wireless power transfer, and bio-electromagnetics.
- Dimitra Pappa
Dr. Dimitra Pappa holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) with a specialisation in Telecommunications, an MBA from the Hellenic Open University and a PhD from the University of Surrey (UK). She has participated in numerous European and national research and development projects in Information Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), eLearning and Knowledge Management as project coordinator, research supervisor, project leader and/or work team member. Projects include POSITIVE LEARN, HEALTH CASCADE, PHAETONS, ADVANCE, CLOUDLEDGE, CRe-AM, OEI2, OpenScout, PROLIX, PROLEARN, COCAL, etc. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed international scientific journals and conferences.
- Niki Vergadou
Dr. Niki Vergadou is a Researcher at the Molecular Thermodynamics and Modelling of Materials Laboratory of the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” in Athens, Greece. She holds a Diploma in Physics from the University of Ioannina, Greece, an MSc in Polymer Science and its Applications and a PhD (2006), both granted from the Chemistry Department of the University of Athens, Greece. Her research involves the development and implementation of computational methods and algorithms for the molecular simulation of materials and the prediction of a wide range of properties. Her research interests include the study of complex chemical systems such as polymers, complex fluids, ionic liquids and composite materials using a multitude of methodologies at various length and time-scales. Her current research activities also focus on the integration of machine learning in multiscale materials modelling and simulation. She is currently participating as co-supervisor in ML-MULTIMEM project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, ID:101030668) in collaboration with the Software and Knowledge Engineering Lab of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications on the development of a Machine Learning-aided Multiscale Modelling Framework for Polymer Membranes.
- Eleonora Ricci
Dr. Eleonora Ricci is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research Demokritos, Athens, Greece. She obtained a BSc (2014) and a MSc (2016) in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, and earned a PhD in 2020 from the same university. In 2021 she was a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct professor of molecular simulations fundamentals at the university of Bologna. Her research work focuses on the application of machine learning methods in multiscale molecular simulation frameworks for the study of carbon capture materials.
- Xenia Ziouvelou
Dr. Xenia Ziouvelou holds a PhD in Internet Economics & Strategy (scholarship awarded) from the Department of Economics of Lancaster University (UK). Xenia is currently working as the Innovation Officer and a research scientist at the Software and Knoweldge Engineering Lab of the Institute of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) of NCSR Demokritos (NCSRD). She is also a visiting academic at the Business School of the University of Southampton (UK) and acts as an external innovation expert for the European Commission. Xenia is a member of the scientific committee of AI4People, Europe’s first Global forum on the social impacts of artificial intelligence, launched by Atomium–European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy (EISMD). She has a long working experience as a senior research scientist, lecturer/Assistant Professor, technology transfer and innovation officer in research and education institutions in UK and in Greece. Xenia has worked as a research scientist and innovation manager in numerous EU-funded research and industrial projects covering diverse thematic areas in the context of innovation and technology-mediated evolution across various industrial sectors. Her principal research interests are in innovation and technological transformation and the way that they revolutionise business, law and policy. Xenia is a working group member of the Creative Commons Greece and holds two open innovation patents (USPO) as the principal investigator.
- Valia Kordoni
Dr. Valia Kordoni is a Deputy Chair of Computational Linguistics at the Department of English at Humboldt University Berlin. She is an active researcher in Language Technology (LT), Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Her research interests include multilingual Robust Natural Language Analytics, Computational Semantics, Discourse and Human Cognition Modeling, as well as Machine Learning for the automated acquisition of knowledge, especially concerning multiword units and figurative language and their impact in Natural Language Processing, spoken and written. She has been the president of the ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) SIGLEX’s (Special Interest Group on Lexicon) MWE (Multiword Expressions) Group. She was the Local Chair of ACL 2016 – The 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. She has coordinated and contributed to many projects funded by the EU, the
DFG (Germany), the BMBF (Germany), the DAAD (Germany), as well as the NSF (USA).
- Eleni Charou
Dr. Eleni Charou received her Diploma in Mathematics (1980) from the University of Athens, Greece her MSc in Information Processing and Neural Networks (1991) from the King’s College, University of London, UK and her PhD in satellite image processing using Neural Networks (2001) from the Geology Department, University of Athens, Greece. She is Researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications in the National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos in Athens, Greece. Her current research interests include Machine Learning, Remote Sensing and Geospatial data analysis. She has 95 published papers, 423 citations and has coordinated/participated in 15 R&D national and EU projects. She is married and has one child (Rea Marmarinou 1993 -2017).