Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) is a new, modern and innovative university aiming to become one the major means to address nowadays science and technology challenges, in an effort to overcome society’s problems. With high-level scientific staff and conducting applied research in high-tech sectors, CUT has already secured over €50,000,000 through 200 competing research programs. Additionally, its academics were actively participated in the study and writing of the National Strategy of Smart Specialization, whereas the same time it maintains strong entrepreneurial relationships with the industry through its cooperation with more than 690 businesses and/or organizations. CUT has already established its participation to a significant number of research projects under HORIZON, Research Promotion Foundation, Interreg, Archimed etc. In addition, CUT is currently playing a leading role for the implementation of a project funded by the structural funds of the European Union for the establishment of industry-liaison offices for the promotion of synergies between the industry and academia through transfer of knowledge and innovation. The Research Centre for Social Science and Regional Development "HERACLITUS" of CUT that will be involved on the project entitled "Book Your Wedding Day Internet Platform v.2.0" has extensive experience (more than 12 years) in international project management and will ensure high quality of project management. The Research Centre of "HERACLITUS will ensure that all activities are carried out as planned within the limits of time and budget. Major relevant publications (produced by the research team of HERACLITUS-CUT), and/or products/services developed, or other achievements, projects or activities relevant to the proposal.
Key Personnel
Dr Sotirios P. Chatzis
Dr Sotiros P. Chatzis is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Informatics, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. He is leading the Statistical Machine Learning (SMiLe) Laboratory of CUT, which currently hosts four full-time PhD students, as well as two part-time post-doctoral researchers, working on various aspects of machine learning theory and applications. He received the MSc. in Electrical and Computer engineering with distinction from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2005, and the PhD degree in Statistical Machine Learning, in 2008, from the same institution. From January 2009 until June 2010, he was a post-doctoral fellow with the University of Miami, FL, USA. From June 2010 until August 2012, he was a senior researcher with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, U.K. He has first-authored more than 60 papers in the most prestigious journals and conferences of his research field. He has served as reviewer of several top-tier venues in Machine Learning, including NIPS, ICCV, AISTATS, and IEEE TNNLS. He is currently serving as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. His current research interests include machine learning theory and methodologies with a special focus on nonparametric statistics, hierarchical/deep generative models, variational inference, modelling data with complex temporal dynamics, and their applications to collaborative filtering, assisted creativity, and natural language processing. His research is currently supported by the H2020 programme, and a research grant from NVIDIA (high-end GPUs for deep learning).
Dr Michael Sirivianos
Dr Michael Sirivianos is an Assistant Professor at CUT since January 2012. Prior to that, he was an Associate Researcher in Telefonica Research. He holds a PhD from Duke University since 2010. His current research interests are in the fields of security in social networks, trust-aware design of distributed systems, secure device pairing, distributed databases, and large scale dataprocessing. He has published papers in the most influential conferences and journals of Networked Systems, including ACM SIGCOMM, USENIX NSDI, IEEE INFOCOM, ACM/USENIX IMC and ACM Transactions on Networking. He has extensive experience in managing EU-funded projects. Specifically, he is the technical manager of the ReCRED project (Horizon 2020 Innovation Action - 2014, budget: 5M Euros) and the coordinator of the ENCASE project (Horizon 2020 Marie Curie RISE - 2015, budget: 2.1M Euros).
Dr Tony Theocharous
Dr Tony Theocharous is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Heraclitus Research Centre for Social Research and Regional Development. He has served as national representative for Cyprus for the Programme Committee for Social Sciences and Humanities of the EU's Horizon and 7th Framework Programme. Dr Theocharous has also served as National Coordinator for two ESFRI projects: the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH). He also acted as a scientific coordinator for more than 30 EU or nationally funded research projects including the development of the Smart Specialisation Strategy for the Republic of Cyprus. His research is interdisciplinary and focuses on deviant behaviours, crime and substance use, the links between political instability and tourism development and innovation policies as tools for regional regeneration. He has published in leading academic journals on topics such as political instability and tourism development, cross cultural examination of the impact of political instability on tourism development at the regional level, various models of tourism destination choice, and mass media depictions of various facets of political instability.
Dr Anastasios Zopiatis
Dr Anastasios Zopiatis is a Hotel and Tourism Management Assistant Professor at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), holds a BSc degree in Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, an MSc degree in Hotel Administration from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and a Doctorate in Professional Studies from Middlesex University, United Kingdom. Prior to joining CUT, he worked in private tertiary education in Cyprus, both as a hospitality and tourism educator and program coordinator. He has also worked in Las Vegas as a Human Resources Specialist and Beverage Manager. His research interests include hospitality internship practices, hospitality human resources management, pedagogical issues, and ethics in the academic environment. His research work has been published in top tier international journals such as Tourism Management, the International Journal of Hospitality Management, the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Scientometrics, Quality in Higher Education, and the Journal of Business Ethics.
Dr Petros Kosmas
Dr Petros Kosmas is an Assistant Coordinator and Researcher at the Research Center for Social Science and Regional Development "HERACLITUS" of Cyprus University of Technology. He received his PhD and Master's Degree in “Sustainable Development” from Harokopio University of Athens, Greece. In 2012 he was placed as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management and this capacity he has participated in National and European research projects. As a Special Scientist during the period 2006-2008 he had teaching and research duties at Harokopio University of Athens. From 2012 he is a Visitor Lecturer at Cyprus College and at the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management of Cyprus University of Technology. From 2013 he is the Coordinator of the Department of Business Administration at Cyprus College.
Dr Spyros Avdimiotis
Dr Spyros Avdimiotis is an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Business Administration at the Alexander Technological Institute of Thessaloniki Greece. His main scientific interests are knowledge management, human resource management and tourism business innovation strategies. Since 2012 he is also a researcher for Cyprus University of Technology, developing the Smart Specialization Strategy in cooperation with the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus. He was also a member of the working team which developed the national law for Spatial Development for tourism, in Greece (2013). He is teaching the courses of “Tourism Policy”, “Innovation and entrepreneurship in Tourism” “Tourism Management” and “Human Resources Management”. He has published 15 articles in international journals, 35 in conference, 3 chapters in collective volumes and one monograph regarding e-destination management tools. He also serves as reviewer for international journals as well.
Dr Theodosios Theodosiou
Dr Theodosios Theodosiou received a BSc degree in Biology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He also received an MSc degree in Informatics from University of Edinburgh with a specialty in Bioinformatics. His doctoral dissertation has the title “Stastistical multivariate methods for data mining data from biological documents and ontologies” covering the wider area of biomedical text mining. During his PhD and the following years he has worked as a researcher in the Institute of Agrobiotechonology, at the Center for Research & Technology, at Thermi, Thessaloniki, Greece. He also worked as a researcher at the Fisheries Research Institute, at Nea Peramos of Kavala, Greece. He is a visiting lecturer in informatics at the Department of Education Sciences in Pre-School Age, at Demokritos University of Thrace. He was also at the Technological Institute of Thessaloniki. The main part of his publications in journals and conference proceedings is focused on the development and application of statistical methods and models for analysing large sets of biomedical data from documents, genes and proteins. He has participated in several international and national conferences. Finally, he has also participated in several funded R&D Greek or European projects (indicatively, BioSapiens – A European network for integrated genome annotation, CADSES, etc).
Dr Nikolaos Mittas
Dr Nikolao Mittas is a visiting Assistant Professor in several undergraduate and postgraduate studies programmes at the Computer Science Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, at the Eastern Macedonia & Trace Institute of Technology, at Hellenic Open University and at Open University of Cyprus. He holds a BSc degree in Mathematics from University of Crete, a MSc degree in Informatics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with a specialty in Information Systems and his doctoral dissertation has the title “Statistical and Computational Methods for Development, Improvement and Comparison of Software Cost Estimation Models” covering the wide area of Prediction and Forecast Modelling and he has published more than 35 articles in international journals and conferences. He has also participated in several funded R&D Greek or European projects as a data scientist and data analyst and mostly in the area of Information & Communications Technologies. Finally, he serves as a reviewer in numerous leading journals of the software engineering domain, and as a member of various international conference program committees.
Mr Petros Giannoulis
Mr Petros Giannoulis worked for several consecutive years as a research associate at the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Cyprus University of Technology. He participated in the design and implementation of a series of projects exploring contemporary social phenomena that influence the Cypriot society including: 1. Social Inclusion of Political Refugees in The Cypriot Society 2. Evaluation of the Social and Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters, Social and Political Violence on Tourism at Selected Eastern Mediterranean And Middle East Countries 3. Social, Psychological and Career Effects of Sexual Harassment in the Working Environment of Cyprus.
Mrs Maria Panagopoulou
Mrs Maria Panagopoulou worked for several consecutive years as a research associate at the Cyprus University of Technology. She participated in the implementation and management of various research programmes, which have been sponsored by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union: 1. Provision of Psychological and Social Support to Asylum Seekers and Beneficiaries of International/Subsidiary Protection 2. Increasing Knowledge Transfer and Innovation in the Mediterranean 3. Ecotourism: New Knowledge by Innovation, New Jobs by Knowledge Transfer.
Mrs Stella Theocharous
Mrs Stella Theocharous received her BA in Greek Culture and Civilisation from the Open University of Cyprus (2013) and her MA in Digital Media and Journalism from the Cyprus University of Technology (December 2015). She was awarded an Award of Excellence for Highest Academic Achievement from the Department of Communication and Internet Studies, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the Cyprus University of Technology. Since January 2016, she is a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication and Internet Studies of the Cyprus University of Technology, having received a scholarship. Her research work focuses on Memory Studies (Collective Memory, National Identity, and Nationalism) as well as on the multifaceted relationship between Media and Terrorism. She speaks Greek and English and lives in Limassol, Cyprus. She is a member of the Administrative staff of the Cyprus University of Technology at the office of the Head of Services for Student Affairs.
