George Caridakis
George Caridakis is a Professor at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean. He coordinates the Intelligent Interaction research group and is active in Human-Computer Interaction, intelligent systems, and digital cultural heritage.
He is affiliated with Athena Research Center and NTUA and has previously held positions at the University of Thessaly and Aalborg University. He serves on numerous scientific committees and has delivered invited talks internationally.
He has been appointed to the European Commission expert group on the common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and has held leadership roles in national research councils and ACM GreekCHI.
His research includes over 50 journal publications and 80 conference papers, with more than 3000 citations (h-index 30). He has over 20 years of experience in more than 40 research projects and significant experience in the ICT industry.
Anastasia Constantelou
Anastasia Constantelou is Professor of Innovation Management at the University of the Aegean. She holds degrees in Informatics and Telecommunications (University of Athens), an MSc in Technology and Innovation Management, and a PhD in Science and Technology Policy (University of Sussex).
She has worked as a consultant at the OECD on telecommunications regulation and as an independent consultant in Greece and abroad. She has also worked as a researcher at NTUA and ICCS. She has been a visiting researcher at institutions including TU Delft, Copenhagen Business School, Aalto University, and others.
Her research focuses on innovation policy, knowledge management, ICT diffusion, and innovation in creative industries. Current interests include public sector innovation, entrepreneurship and ICT, and organizational learning within Smart Specialisation strategies. She has extensive publications and editorial roles, including Associate Editor of Electronic Markets.
Panayiotis Koutsabasis
Panayiotis Koutsabasis is a Professor at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean. He holds a degree in Applied Informatics, an MSc in Information Systems from the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a PhD from the University of the Aegean.
He has been affiliated with the University of the Aegean since 1996 and has progressed through all academic ranks to Professor (2025–present). He contributed to shaping the department’s curriculum and establishing the “Interactive Systems Design” specialization and laboratory, and served as Head of Department (2022–2025).
He has taught Human-Computer Interaction and Informatics for over two decades, supervised two PhDs and over 100 theses, and authored two Greek-language books on HCI. He has published over 100 papers, with an h-index of 20 (Scopus) and 27 (Google Scholar).
He serves as reviewer and committee member for numerous international conferences and journals and is part of ACM CHIGreece. His research interests include HCI and design methods, natural interaction (kinaesthetic, airborne, mixed/augmented reality, wearables), user experience (usability, accessibility), and research-through-design in domains such as digital heritage, education, collaborative work, and experience tourism.
Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos
Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos is a tenured Assistant Professor in Computer Animation at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean. He teaches undergraduate courses including Computer Animation, Animation, Digital Narrative Forms, Entrepreneurship, and Internship. He has also developed three open-access digital courses for the general public: Animation, Computer Animation, and Digital Narrative Forms.
His academic and professional experience in audiovisual technologies dates back to 1986, both in Greece and France during his doctoral studies. Since July 2013, he has been the scientific coordinator of XARTS – International Conference and Summer School on Extended Arts, which since 2015 awards 3 ECTS credits. He is also a tutor at the Hellenic Open University in the program “Film Writing, Practice, and Research.”
His research interests focus on applications of digital imaging in audiovisual media and the arts, entrepreneurship in creative industries, and the history and theory of computer animation.
Karine Lespinasse
Karine Lespinasse, PhD, is an associate professor in both Library and Information Sciences and Linguistics-NLP at the Paragraphe Laboratory of Paris 8 University, co-director of two Master’s programs, ‘Digital Transitions’ and ‘Heritage and Cultural Mediation’.
She taught in a diversity of institutions out of France during a 19-year period of relocation (USA, China, Thailand, Singapore). She currently collaborates with the departement of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism of the ERUA Partner UNIM, Italy, on the use of multilingual storytelling in education.
She is a member of Mediations, Informational Practices and Heritage (MPIP) research stream at the Paragraphe lab. Her research interests include multilingualism in the context of AI prompting, language learning, automatic translation, storytelling and indexing, as well as evaluating information retrieval. Currently, she serves as reviewer in the programme committee of SEASON, the Search Engines conference.
Matthieu Quiniou
Matthieu Quiniou is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Sciences at the Paragraphe Laboratory of Paris 8 University, co-director of the Master’s program in Digital Transitions, and co-holder of the UNESCO Chair in Digital Innovation, Transmission, and Publishing (ITEN). He serves as Coordinator of the AI Advisory Office of the CEPEJ at the Council of Europe and as Chair of the French Standardization Committee on the Metaverse at AFNOR.
His research focuses on the transformations of authorship in the age of generative artificial intelligence, as well as on the ethical, legal, and communicational implications of digital creation. He studies the articulation between fundamental rights, AI ethics, and governance frameworks, and explores how emerging Web3 technologies (blockchain, NFTs, decentralized systems) and digital cultures such as DeGen and Brainrot reshape creative practices, cultural production, and value systems.
He regularly speaks at international conferences for UNESCO (Paris, Doha, Brazzaville…) or the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, Bucharest, Rabat…) on the use of AI in the justice sector, and advises various national institutions and ministries on the ethical and regulatory challenges of artificial intelligence. He has authored several books, articles, and international reports on the ethical, legal, and societal issues of digital technologies related to blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Lilian Mitrou
Lillian Mitrou is a Professor at the University of the Aegean. She studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and completed her PhD at the University of Frankfurt under Professor Spiros Simitis.
She teaches Data Protection Law and Information/Internet Law and has served as visiting professor at AUEB and the University of Piraeus. She was Director of Office and Advisor to former Prime Minister K. Simitis (1993–2004). She served as member of the Hellenic Data Protection Authority and chaired the EU Council Working Party on Data Protection (DAPIX) during the Greek Presidency (2014). From 2016 to 2023, she was a member of the National Council for Radio and Television.
She is President of the Institute for Privacy, Personal Data and Technology (EPLO). She has participated in numerous legislative committees and research projects and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Law of Technology and Communication.” Her work focuses on privacy, personal data protection, and ethical/legal aspects of Artificial Intelligence.
Nicolas Sauret
Nicolas Sauret is an associate professor of information and communication sciences at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis, where he teaches in the Digital Humanities department. His research focuses on the digital materiality of writing and publishing. He is particularly interested in collective writing in the digital environment and its conversational dynamics. Through research-action, he explores the practices of different writing communities — digital literature, commons, universities — with and for whom he co-designs open, shared writing and publishing spaces. This work is part of an epistemological reflection on knowledge production, dissemination, and legitimization in the digital environment.
Orélie Desfriches Doria
Orélie Desfriches Doria, PhD, is an associate professor in Library and Information Sciences and a researcher in Paragraphe Laboratory, in Information Sciences. Since 2015, her research is focused on the modeling of arguments, cartography of controversies, and speech analysis from various publications supporting controversial topics, including technological trends or digital industrialists’ speech about these trends. Her work aims to give critical thinking skills and to study how to improve the conditions for the exercise of freewill in the context of the digitalization of society and the massive collection of personal data by digital firms.
She is a member of two axes at the Paragraphe laboratory: the first one, Mediations, Informational Practices and Heritage (MPIP); and the second (CITU) which conducts research on Digital Innovation and Artificial Intelligence.
Currently, she is lead of axis 1 of the ANR Amulex project, which aims to analyze a corpus of 2.8 millions of comments on political interviews across four social media platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch), collected during the 2022 French presidential elections. This project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), has a budget of €370,000, of which €145,000 is allocated to the Paragraphe laboratory. Combining discourse analysis, big data, and corpus analysis, this project aims to study online political expression using two software programs, Prospéro and Gargantext. This three-year project involves numerous other researchers from several laboratories and requires meticulous attention to methodological integration.
Samuel Szoniecky
Samuel Szoniecky work at the Paragraphe laboratory (EA 349, Université Paris 8 mainly in the Digital Devices: Production, Uses and Communication Modeling (DiNuPUMoC) axis under the direction of Imad Saleh but with numerous collaborations with the other axes of this laboratory in particular Digital Innovation and Artificial Intelligence (CiTU), Mediations, Information Practices, Heritage (MPIP), Learning, Development, Cognition (ADC) during joint publications (szoniecky 2016; szoniecky 2017; desfrichesdoria 2022; ihadjadène 2013; laborderie 2015; meunier 2017; meunier 2018), research projects conducted in collaboration (Polemika project, Pédagothèque project) or organization of scientific events (Adacemu seminar, O1 Design, H2ptm…). The very fertile atmosphere within Paragraphe and the intense relations that this laboratory maintains with the community of information and communication sciences, has stimulated the commitment of his research in multiple collaborations in France and abroad. These have allowed him to discover very diverse environments and practices, for example: with prestigious institutions such as the National Library of France, the National Archives or the INA, with ANR research programs such as Biolographes or Aliento, with international research projects such as Arcanes, with research groups such as GENIC or MANEP, with important societal issues such as accessibility, ecology or ethics. Participation from the outset in three Future Investment Projects (PIA), namely the H2H laboratory of excellence, IDEFI CréaTIC and EUR ArTec, gave him the chance to discover important projects both in terms of research governance and the possibility of experimentation. His research fields question the complexity of digital devices (generative AIs, Internet of Things, editorialization, modeling and mapping tools), both from the point of view of the technologies they use (legoux 2023) and the discourses that focus on them (bachimont 2017; citton 2023; ertzscheid 2023; masure 2023; mineur 2022; saleh 2018). Faced with these knowledge ecosystems (szoniecky 2014) that are difficult to discern, reason about and act on, he propose a method of analyzing these phenomena that gives researchers the means to construct specific points of view, share them with others and see their evolutions. This method is based on an onto-ethical modeling of the informational existences that populate these environments (szoniecky 2023; szoniecky 2020; szoniecky 2016). He base ourselves on 8 fundamental principles that we have defined as the basis of our research : • dialogical principle • recursive principle • hologrammatic principle • principle of the cycle of semiosis • principle of analogical folds • principle of trajective reason • principle of degrees of flexibility • ontoethical principle We practice this method using tools that we design and develop to produce knowledge maps according to this principles.
Modestos Stavrakis
Modestos Stavrakis serves as a tenured Assistant Professor at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering of the University of the Aegean, with a specialization in Interaction Design. He is also affiliated teaching staff at the Hellenic Open University (Multimedia), a visiting researcher at UDIMA in Spain, and a research fellow at the BITrum Research Group in Spain and the Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society in Austria.
He holds a PhD in Design for Interaction, an MSc in Computer Aided Graphical Technology Applications, and a BA with first-class honours in Creative Visualisation. His research and writing include publications in journals, conferences, and books in the fields of interaction design and user experience, collaborative design, human-computer interaction, digital arts, assistive technologies, virtual reality, and distance/e-learning.
He has extensive teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, delivering courses on interaction design and interactive systems, product design (ideation and concept design), multimedia, 3D modeling, and animation. He has successfully supervised undergraduate and postgraduate theses and has served as a member of three doctoral dissertation committees.
He has also served on the scientific committees of conferences and journals in interaction design, multimedia, and cultural heritage. He has participated as principal investigator and senior researcher in research and development projects funded by national and European resources. These include: European Reform University Alliance: ERUA (Erasmus+ 2019–2027), IMAGINE-MOCAP 2023 (HFRI), IOHIVE (2019–2024), Virtual Historic Sailing Ships (VHSS), Robo STEAM (Erasmus+ 2021–2025), e-Aegean CulTour, ENORASI, REGNET, ASPIS, SHOPLAB, GUARDIANS, IRIS, and BenToWeb.
Spyros Vosinakis
Spyros Vosinakis is an Associate Professor at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean, specializing in Virtual Reality. He holds a degree in Informatics from the University of Piraeus, an MSc in Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments from the University of Hull (UK), and a PhD from the University of Piraeus on intelligent agents in virtual environments.
His research interests include multi-user virtual environments, intelligent virtual agents, adaptive and personalized user interfaces, serious games, and 3D user interfaces, as well as their applications in culture, tourism, and education.
He has authored one book and 77 scientific publications, with approximately 680 citations. He has participated in eleven funded R&D projects (three as coordinator) and has over fifteen years of experience as a developer of interactive systems and 3D applications. His research spans virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, natural and 3D user interfaces, serious games, digital cultural heritage, and intelligent virtual agents.
Khaldoun Zreik
Khaldoun Zreik is a Full Professor in the Digital Humanities Department at the University Paris 8, where he also initiated the Master Program Digital Transitions. He is part of Paragraphge Lab. As a researcher and co-chair of CITU research group (Technological Innovation and Artificial Intelligence). He has been Editor of the International Journal of Design Sciences & Technology since 1991 and co-editor the Journal of Human Mediated Interactions from 1996 to 2204 and since 2008. He has chaired and co-chaired numerous international conferences in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Computer Art, Design Sciences and Technology, Human-System Learning, Smart Documents, Smart Heritage (HyperHeritage), Post-Digital Art, and Smart Cities (HyperUrban).
He received his Civil Engineering degree in 1979. He earned a Master of Science in Computer-Aided Design from the “École des Ponts – ParisTech” and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from the “ d’Urbanisme de Paris” in 1983. In 1984, he obtained a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Paris VI. He defended his PhD in Intelligent Computer-Aided Design at the “École des Ponts – ParisTech” in 1986. In 1993, he received a degree in Research Direction from the University of Sciences and Technology of Lille-I, and later that year, he became a Full Professor in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Caen. Since 2006, he has been a Full Professor in Information and Communication Sciences at the University Paris 8.
Irene Rigopoulou
Irini Rigopoulou, PhD.
Associate Professor
Dept of Product and Systems Design Engineering
University of the Aegean, Syros, Greece
She started her career as a Marketing Executive. She worked for Greek [ Biophysis SA ] and multi-national companies [ Bayer AG ] for more than 12 years.
Her love to knowledge transfer and her multifaceted experience with young people directed her towards an academic career, so since 16 years she was Lecturer and Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Greece and since February 2018 holds her current position in the Dept of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean. In addition, she was Tutor in distance programs [Bachelor and MSc] of Hellenic Open University and the Open University of Cyprus and other affiliations of British Unis. During her academic career, she is co-author of various articles in highly regarded scientific journals and educational manuals and books and/or conferences participations. Her Research interests are related to the Strategic Brand Design & Management, the Heritage Branding and the Consumer Behavior. As far as the Creative Business she is contributing by offering the business perspective for long lasting initiatives In the whole spectrum of Creative expression, art – Craftmanship – and Artisan.
At the same time, she has been working and still is active as a Company Consultant & Seminar Instructor on issues of Branding & Marketing Strategic Management, under a holistic perspective.
In parallel, her faith in people and their potential, directed her towards Psychology and Coaching. She is a Certified Coach by the University of Cambridge, UK. She considers it essential to offer her knowledge and address her personal interest in development processes oriented towards personal potential, especially for young people. She was the initiator of the (first and only) Personal Development Program among Universities, addressed to AUEB PostGrad students for 7 years.
Xanthi Papageorgiou
Dr. Xanthi S. Papageorgiou serves as an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering, Department of Product & Systems Design Engineering (DPSD) at the University of the Aegean. She is currently also Head of Robotics & Cognitive Systems Unit at UBITECH, Athens, Greece and UBITECH LIMITED, Limassol, Cyprus – The Ubiquitous Technologies Company. She was an adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering (MECH) at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) (2022-2024). She was an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics (Physics), at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UOA) (2019-2021). She was a Scientific Associate in the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP), at the Athena Research Center (“Athena” R.C.) (2019-2021). She was a Senior Research Fellow in Robotics Control and Decision Systems (RCDS) Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering (MEM), at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) (2018-2020). Also, she was a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Laboratory (IRAL), School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) (2013-2018). She holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree from NTUA (2003) and a PhD (2009) on the subject of Motion Tasks on Neuro-Robotic Systems, from the Control Systems Laboratory, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, where, she worked on a number of research projects (2002-2009). She joined Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus, School of Technological Applications, as an Adjunct Lecturer on Digital Control and Microcontrollers (2008-2015). Her main research interests include neuro-robotics, human/robot interaction, neuro-science, and rehabilitation, as well as motion tasks, force control, compliant, adaptive and optimal control methods, and their applications to robotic systems, eGovernance, Data Platforms, Traceability, Supply Chain, Food Safety. She has authored and co-authored more than 70 scientific publications in international journals and conference proceedings. She has also participated in several national and international research programs. She currently is a reviewer in several international journals and conferences. She is a member of IEEE, IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, IEEE Control Systems Society, and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Laure Leroy
Graduated from the Polytechnic School of the Free University of Brussels as an mecatronic engineer Laure Leroy specialized in virtual reality. So, she made her PhD on stereoscopic interfaces at the School Mines Paristech, in the robotic center. She completed her postdoctoral studies on cognitive rehabilitation in virtual reality. Now, she is associated professor at the University of Paris 8, where she studied the reduction of sensori-motor conflicts in virtual reality, in gestural and visual interfaces.
