Here’s a space dedicated to the TT8 team. A multidisciploinary group consisting of cultural managers, artists, computer researchers and psychology researchers.
Panos Gkiokas
Co-founder & CEO of MENTORPanos was born in 1984, and raised in Eleusis. He graduated from the Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2007, and went on to do a postgraduate course in Marketing at the University of Leicester, and Heritage Management at the Hellenic Open University. In 2017 he received a scholarship from the Hellenic Initiative to participate in the StartMIT program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2008, he has worked in various B2B companies in the private sector as a Sales and Marketing Director. Currently, he is active in the organization and management of NGOs, with the goal of protecting and promoting the rich cultural heritage of Greece abroad.
Yannis Pappas
Co-founder & COO of MENTORYannis studied Italian Language & Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and holds a Master's degree in Conference Interpreting & Translation (EN/FR>GR) from the University of Strasbourg. In 2014, he co-founded and is the chief operations officer at Mentor, specializing in digital communications. As he himself acknowledges, he is an introvert, typo crusader, wanderlust-filled, allergic to animal abuse/racism/bullying/stereotypes, philhellene from Chios island, Greece.
Virginia Vassilakou
Project ManagerVirginia grew up in Athens, graduated from the Department of Physics at the University of Athens and AKTO from the Department of Interior Architecture. She completed her postgraduate studies in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Lund University, Sweden. She has worked in various industries in the field of business development and new market networks and as a strategic development consultant. She joined MENTOR in 2019 as General Manager in Cultural Production and Management, where she has been responsible for managing and coordinating artistic and cultural projects and developing strategic partnerships with organisations on a European level. Some of the projects are productions within the framework of "All Greece is one culture" of the Ministry of Culture, the project "Narrative Archaeology" within the artistic programme of the 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture, "Transition to 8" under the EU Regional Development program, as well as international collaborations such as the Art Lab initiative by UNESCO, the project "Adama" funded by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) in the framework of the New European Bauhaus initiative, and the participation of MENTOR in consortia for Creative Europe and Horizon projects.
Alkistis Kontopoulou
Communications ManagerAlkistis Kontopoulou is a graduate of the Art Theory and History Department of the Athens School of Fine Arts and is currently completing her studies at the masters program of the aforementioned institution. Her thesis explores the political art performance pieces presented in Greece during the ‘70s. She has attended university courses on diverse areas, including methodologies of education, adult education and digital marketing. She has participated in several art projects as a curator, organizer and writer. For five years, she held the administration assistant position at Dieleusis, a cultural space in Athens. At MENTOR she was in charge of content creation and communications.
Fofi Tsesmeli
Artist ManagerOne of the most known DJs in Greece, Fofi (aka Fo) has cooperated with several promoters, festival directors and international DJs. The past years she has been professionally active in the media sector (digital & printed), but she has also worked in radio producing, as an A&R in labels, as a consultant in a music publishing company, and more. Currently, she is working at the leading urban culture mag called ‘LiFO’ providing exclusive interviews of international producers & DJs, as well as content regarding the local and international club scene. Fofi is also the founder of HER Project, a local initiative regarding female empowerment in the music industry.
Pandelis Diamantides
Digital Artist - ResearcherPandelis Diamantides is a sound, visual artist and researcher active at the intersection of art, science and technology. In his music compositions and audiovisual performances, he uses custom digital technology to create complex binary landscapes, where detailed sound design and electronic rhythms are enhanced by multifaceted visuals providing a true immersive experience. He is the author of the audiovisual series of works Green, False Awakenings, Go Back to Hiding in the Shadows and the recent Quickly Photographed and Released Unharmed. Through a series of collaborations he has created sound, visuals and software for audiovisual performances, interactive audiovisual installations, contemporary dance and theatre, co-creating artworks such as Drowning, plplpl.pl, Mutual Wave Machine, Polaris, Anima, In Circles and Tune In. In recent years, his work has been presented at international festivals and galleries in Europe, USA, South America, Asia and the UAE. Between 2017-19 he was a visiting teacher of Programming Multimedia at Cyprus University of Technology and in 2020 he had the opportunity to work as Research Associate at the Immersive Technologies for Intelligent and Creative Applications multidisciplinary research group at the Research Center on Interactive Media, Cyprus. He currently holds a position of Research Associate at ATHENA Research Center, Greece while working on projects with his team at Studio Pandelis Diamantides in the Netherlands.
Katerina El Raheb
ResearcherShe is a researcher in Human Computer Interaction since 2009 working in projects that investigate technologies in Culture, Art and Education (e.g., WhoLoDance, Bridges, Transitionto8) and focuses on the design and methodologies that celebrate the embodied, moving, expressive, social multifaceted human nature. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt. For Katerina the challenge of creatively connecting things that seem completely diverse is a part of her life. She holds a PhD in the study of "dance as language" from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens (UoA), a MSc. in Advanced Information Systems from the same department, a BSc. in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, a diploma in classical and contemporary dance (Professional Dance School "Niki Kontaxaki”, and has practical experience from the industry and the performing arts as dance artist. She has been teaching at the Department of Performing and Digital Arts at the University of Peloponnese since 2019.
Yannis Ioannidis
Scientific Project ManagerYannis Ioannidis (PhD, Computer Science, UC Berkeley, 1986 – MSc, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, 1983 – Diploma, Electrical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 1982) is the President and General Director of the “Athena” Research and Innovation Center as well as a Professor at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests include Database and Information Systems, Data Infrastructures and Digital Repositories, Data Science, Scalable Data Processing, Data and Text Analytics, and Recommender Systems and Personalization, topics on which he has published over 150 articles in leading journals and conferences and also holds three patents. His work is often inspired by and applied to data management problems that arise in industrial environments or in the context of other scientific fields (Cultural Heritage, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Biodiversity). He has been the coordinator of several European and national research and innovation projects and a partner in tens of others, and has led or is currently leading the creation of new international or spin-off companies. He is an ACM and IEEE Fellow, a member of Academia Europaea, and a recipient of several research and teaching awards. He is currently serving as the Secretary / Treasurer of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and is a member of the ACM Europe Council. He is a vice chair of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the Greek delegate to ESFRI and a member of its Executive Board, and the ESFRI representative to the e-Infrastructures Reflection Group (e-IRG).
Vilelmini Kalampratsidou
Computer researcherVilelmini Kalampratsidou got her Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, NJ, USA in 2018, after completing her engineering degree at the Technical University of Crete, Greece, at the Electronic and Computer Engineering Department. She also attained the Cognitive Science Certificate from Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science in May 2018. Her research focuses on developing interactive interfaces that augment auditorily and visually (among other ways of sensory augmentation) information recorded from the human body, such as heart activity and movement. She is particularly interested in using these interfaces in real-time to raise awareness of our own sensory-motor system and investigate the human adaptation and learning process. She also loves the blending of those interfaces with artistic practices, including interactive dance performances. Finally, she has studied at the Professional Dance School of Athens Conservatoire, where she studies the practical aspects of classical and contemporary dance.
Akrivi Katifori
Computer Science ResearcherVivi completed her studies as a computer engineer in the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. She was directly involved in research projects related to virtual museums and digital experiences for heritage, working initially as a programmer and later as an analyst and experience designer. Her interests span across different research areas of computer science, including computer human interaction, personalization, experience design and evaluation, and she has authored several papers in these fields. Working closely with heritage experts made her realize that a common cross-domain language and mutual understanding are crucial for digital heritage to be truly meaningful and she is working to cultivate this within all projects of the team, including the EU funded CHESS and the EMOTIVE research programmes.
Maria Boile
Project ManagerMaria is a research associate at the “Athena” Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies and the University of Athens. She is also PhD candidate in History of Art, holding a BS degree from the University of Athens in Archaeology and History of Art, an MSc degree in History of Art from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MSc from the Hellenic Open University in Cultural Organisations Management. Her research interests are on the diffusion of innovation in cultural organisations, open data, preservation and reuse of cultural heritage, and new management approaches of collections and museums. Since 2005, she has been working in several European and national funded projects related to ICT in the Cultural Heritage domain.
Marina Stergiou
Computer Science Researcher / DeveloperMarina is a researcher in the field of human-computer interaction and a designer and developer of Mixed, Virtual and Augmented reality applications. She loves music and dance, therefore her research interests focus mainly on the intersection of these arts with technology. She collaborates with research center “ATHENA” and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens from 2017, participating in projects such as :WhoLoDance, Aria, Transitioto8. Since 2021 she collaborates with the University of the Aegean, department of Product and System Design Engineering, where she is a phd student as well. She holds a Chemical Engineering Diploma from National Technical University of Athens, a MEng in Design of Industrial and Interactive Products and Systems, University of the Aegean and a Piano Degree from National Conservatoire of Athens.