Foreword

Dear Readers,

Another reinvigorating summer is over; a summer that energized us by research, conferences, workshops, schools, seminars and travel and inspired us with new ideas and new research avenues to pursue.

In June, we organized four Workshops, in the context of the 2nd Hellenic Forum for Science, presenting and discussing our Researchers’ latest efforts to bridge the digital and physical worlds.

In July, IIT organized and hosted the 2nd IRSS, a 4-week Research-Centered Summer School, exceeding last year's great success and gaining a number of very positive reviews in the Greek press.

Also in July, in collaboration with the Arsakeia-Tositseia Schools, we organized SMART Camp, a 2-week workshop on digital arts and robotics, a fantastic event with lots of inspiration and fun for students between 14 and 18 years old.

Since the first of September, dusting off quickly the summer inertia and picking up pace, IIT organized the ICFHR 2014 conference, in Crete (1-4/9). We continue, with our presence at the 79th Thessaloniki International Fair (6-14/9) and, right after that, with the organization of the 2nd BioASQ Workshop (16-17/9). On September 16, the first large scale exercise of the FP7 Demonstration Project PERSEUS Eastern Campaign and its validation took place in Greece (Ikaria & Piraeus). The month of September will culminate with the Researcher's Night, an EU institution which takes place every year simultaneously in several hundred cities all over Europe and beyond, and last year had attracted the unprecedented number of over 8,000 visitors. At this year's Researchers' Night, our research teams will present to the public IIT's cutting-edge technologies.

As we are revving up our engines for the winter R&D activities, we' d like to wish everybody a nice comeback and a very successful year!

Stelios Thomopoulos, IIT Director

Research

Public R&D dissemination

Project CyberROAD (ISL) extensively presented on RAI 3
Project CyberROAD, in which ISL, IIT, is a partner, was extensively presented on TGR (TeleGiornale Regionale) of RAI 3 (RAI: Italy's national public broadcasting company).
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Publications: Books, Journal articles, Conference papers

Projects' Newsletters: Want to stay in touch with our R&D projects' activities?

New R&D Projects
• CyberROAD (Development of the Cybercrime and Cyber-terrorism Reseach Roadmap) (started)
• EU CISE 2020 (ΕU Common Information Sharing Environment 2020) (started)
• SentIMAGi (Brand monitoring and reputation management via multi-modal sentiment analysis) (started)

List of IIT FP7 projects (in pdf)

Events

26 September: Don't miss the Researchers' Night 2014!
The central event is on Friday, 26 September 2014, from 18:00 to midnight, at NCSR Demokritos. The IIT will be there!
The Researchers' Night is a mega event which takes place every year simultaneously in several hundred cities all over Europe and beyond. Whether with family, friends, your school, or on your own, you will find yourself exploring science in engaging ways. Discover what researchers really do and why it matters for your daily life.
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15-18 September: 2nd BioASQ Workshop
The Second BioASQ Workshop, organized by SKEL, will be part of CLEF 2014. The aim of the workshop is to push the research frontier towards systems that use the diverse and voluminous information available online to respond directly to the information needs of biomedical scientists. Workshop highlights: 1) the results of the open BioASQ challenge will be presented and awards will be given to the winners, 2) invited talk: "An Inquiry Into Question-Answering And Deep QA" by Patrick Ruch, HES-SO, Geneva.
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16 September: large scale exercise of the FP7 Demonstration Project PERSEUS Eastern Campaign
The first large scale exercise of the FP7 Demonstration Project PERSEUS Eastern Campaign and its validation took place in Greece (Ikaria and Piraeus), with the participation of the Hellenic Coast Guard and the Hellenic Ministry of Defense, integrating systems and assets from various industrial and research labs partners across EU, under a common System of Systems solution developed by the Integrated Systems Lab (ISL) of IIT.
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6-14 September: IIT at the 79th Thessaloniki International Fair
Our Institute is participating in the 79th International Fair of Thessaloniki (6-14 September 2014). Selected technologies from IIT are part of the overall presence of the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" (visit Pavilion 15, Stand 19).
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1-4 September: IIT co-organizes ICFHR 2014 conference
Dr B. Gatos (CIL) Co-Chaired the 14th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR 2014), which took place in the island of Crete. The ICFHR provides a forum for researchers in the areas of on-line and off-line handwriting recognition, pen-based interface systems, form processing, handwritten-based digital libraries, and web document access and retrieval.
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11 July: workshop on 'Entrepreneurship and Innovation'
A workshop on 'Entrepreneurship and Innovation' was organized in the context of the NCSR "Demokritos" summer school, at the main auditorium of the campus. Dr V. Karkaletsis from IIT presented the objectives of the workshop. Experts involved in different ways in 'Entrepreneurship and Innovation' gave their own aspect on problems, opportunities and prospects in the area.
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1-4 July: Four Workshops by IIT within the 2nd Hellenic Forum for Science, Innovation and Technology
The Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) organized with great success three Workshops on (1) Immersive Tourism, (2) Safety and Security and (3) Oil & Gas, within the 2nd Hellenic Forum for Science, Innovation and Technology at the NCSR "Demokritos" Congress Center. The 4th Workshop was on Agricultural & Food safety datasets and semantic technologies, and was organized by the Software & Knowledge Engineering Lab (SKEL).
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4-7 July: 2nd SemaGrow Hackathon
The 2nd SemaGrow Hackathon was organized by Agro-know within IRSS 2014 and in the context of the SemaGrow Project. Its overall aim was to use the SemaGrow Stack components for developing real world applications. At the Closing Ceremony the participants presented their hacks and the experts committee selected the team consisting of F. Kirstein, E. Mavroudi & N. Zoulis, and their concept titled "FarmLearning - A Knowledge Network" for the 500 euro prize.
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IIT participated in numerous Conferences and Workshops
During the first quarter of 2014 researchers from IIT participated in numerous conferences and workshops, like COLING 2014, ECAI 2014, AICoB 2014, ICRA 2014, LREC 2014, PETRA 2014, SETN 2014, AAMAS 2014, etc.
Conferences & Workshops IIT participated in

• 18 August: Dr C. Spyropoulos (SKEL) and Dr S. Perantonis (CIL) co-organized the "3rd International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Assistive Medicine" (AI-AM/NetMed 2014)", in Prague, Czech Republic, in the context of ECAI 2014 (18-22 August). Read more
• 18 August: Dr A. Artikis (SKEL), participated with a tutorial titled "Formal Methods for Event Processing" in ECAI 2014 (18-22 August), which took place in Prague, Czech Republic. Read more
• 7 July: Dr P. Karampiperis (SKEL) co-organized the ICALT 2014 Track "CreativeTeL", in Athens, in the context of ICALT 2014 (7-9 July). Read more
• 31 May: Dr G. Paliouras (SKEL) participated as invited speaker in the "4th Workshop on Building and Evaluating Resources for Health and Biomedical Text Processing" (BioTxtM 2014), which took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, within LREC 2014 (26-31 May). Read more
• 18 May: Dr A. Artikis (SKEL) participated, as invited speaker in the "16th European Agent Systems Summer School" (EASSS 2014), which took place in Chania, Crete. Read more
• 5 May: Dr I. Vetsikas (SKEL) co-organized the AMEC/TADA 2014 Workshop, in Paris, France, in the context of AAMAS 2014 (5-9 May). Read more

Education

20-21 September: Net Media Lab - a new round of seminars on "Special Education" kicks-off
Net Media Lab announces a new round of seminars for the academic year 2014-2015 entitled "New Technologies & Modern Approaches in Special Education - Evaluation Tools and Intervention Programs for Students with Special Educational Needs". The seminars will kick-off with a free seminar, that will take place over the weekend of 20 & 21 September at the Main Auditorium of NCSR "Demokritos". In the past two years, approximately 7000 teachers and professors have attended our free seminars, while 130 of them have attended our paid annual seminars either partially or in full.
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3-30 July: students and robots interacted in the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications
Successfully completed the International Research-Centered Summer School in "Cognitive Systems and Interactive Robotics, Data and Content Analysis". 34 foreign and Greek students and researchers have participated in this pioneer initiative for Greece. The Summer School was organized by SKEL (Software & Knowledge Engineering Lab) of IIT, ATC (Athens Technology Center) and IRML (Interactive Robots and Media Lab), at the premises of NCSR "Demokritos".
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11 July: successful conclusion of ISL SMART Camp 2014
The Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) of IIT, in collaboration with the Educational Society (Arsakeia - Tositseia Schools), successfully organized SMART Camp, a summer workshop in Digital Technologies and Informatics. The workshop had two cycles and was held at the premises of Arsakeion Schools of Psychiko. The first cycle issued the digital arts, while the second Robotics.
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Lecture series at IIT - The IIT Seminar series gives the opportunity to postgraduate students, to new or existing members of the Institute's labs, to internal and external (invited) speakers to present their work and establish collaborations. List of upcoming and past seminars

2014-15: topics for MSc/BSc Theses and internships by IIS
See all the topics proposed by the Intelligent Information Systems (IIS) Division of IIT, for MSc/BSc theses and internships for 2014-15, in scientific areas like algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, image analysis, and many more.

• M. Papakostas and N. Sarafianos, our new PhD students, left Greece in mid August, to start their PhD studies at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Houston respectivelly. IIT wishes them all the best in their endeavor. View all our PhD theses in progress
• Internships completed by: Kalpaktsoglou Giorgos, Ximeris Giorgos, Stavrinos Giorgos, Vlasopoulos Christos, Karna Despoina, Doukas Vasilios, Vasilakakis Michalis, Mavrouli Stavroula-Maria, Kollintza-Kyriakoulia Foteini, Evaggelakaki Magdalini, Goutsias Konstantinos. Read more
• Dr Peppas (WiCom) gave a lecture entitled: "Modern wireless communication networks", at the Summer School organized by NCSR Demokritos, between 7 and 18 July 2014. Read more
• 19-23 May: Evmorfili Andreou, member of WiCom laboratory and PhD student, participated at the Course on MM Wave Antennas and Technologies, organized in Rennes, France. Read more

Miscellaneous

Tribute to IRSS 2014 from "Kathimerini", "Imerisia" and "Proto thema" newspapers
Three articles appeared in the Greek Press reporting the impact and results of the International Research-Centered Summer School in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Robotics, Data and Content Analysis (IRSS 2014) and the 2nd SemaGrow Hackathon (within IRSS 2014), both co-organized by SKEL, IIT.
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6 May: 1st prize in the Public Open Data Hackathon 2014
G. Panagopoulos and J. Katakis (SKEL) awarded the first prize in the Public Open Data Hackathon 2014. The prize was awarded for an application (A.G.IN.A.R.A), developed in just a few days, exploiting open data in daily shopping.
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3758 downloads, in 2,5 years for the book "Knowledge-Driven Multimedia Information Extraction and Ontology Evolution" by G. Paliouras, C.D. Spyropoulos and G. Tsatsaronis, on SpringerLink, as reported by Spinger on September 2014.
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• USA National Academy of Education Study prepared by Columbia University included a Net Media Lab paper. Read more
• Nine (9) new jobs were announced by IIT, between May and August 2014. View all job openings at IIT

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