Staff
In this section you can find short bio notes for the Institute's research staff.
- Professor Vassilis Digalakis
- Professor Nicholas Sidiropoulos
- Professor Michael Paterakis
- Professor Stayros Christodoulakis
- Professor Michael Zervakis
- Professor George Stavrakakis
- Professor Athanasios Liavas
- Associate Professor Euripides Petrakis
- Associate Professor Dionisios Pnevmatikatos
- Associate Professor Alexandros Potamianos
- Assistant Professor Matthias Bucher
- Assistant Professor Ioannis Papaefstathiou
- Assistant Professor George Karystinos
Professor Vassilios Digalakis
Vassilios V. Digalakis received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1986, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Systems Engineering from Boston University, Boston, MA, in 1992.
From January 1992 to February 1995 he was with the Speech Technology and Research Laboratory of SRI International in Menlo Park, CA. At SRI, he was a principal investigator for ARPA research contracts and he developed new speech recognition and speaker adaptation algorithms for the DECIPHER speech recognition system. He holds several US patents on speech recognition and his technology was used by Nuance Communications, an SRI spin-off and world-wide leader in speech recognition. Since 1995, he is a Professor in the department of Electronic and Computer engineering of the Technical University of Crete in Chania. He is also the Director of the Telecommunications Systems Institute of the Technical University of Crete and member of the board of Dialogos Speech Communications, a leading company in Greece in speech-enabled solutions for contact centers. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Speech Processing and on Digital and Analog Communications. His research interests are in pattern and speech recognition, speech processing and digital communications.
Prof. Digalakis has authored many articles in journals and refereed conference proceedings, has received two best paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society and has more than 1500 citations. He can be contacted at 
Professor Nicholas Sidiropoulos
Nicholas Sidiropoulos (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP), in 1988, 1990 and 1992, respectively. From 1988 to 1992 he was a Fulbright Fellow and a Research Assistant at the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) of the University of Maryland. From September 1992 to June 1994 he served his military service as a Lecturer in the Hellenic Air Force Academy. From October 1993 to June 1994 he also was a member of the technical sta®, Systems Integration Division, G-Systems Ltd., Athens - Greece. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow (1994-1995) and Research Scientist (1996-1997) at ISR-UMCP, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Virginia (1997-1999), and Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota - Minneapolis (2000-2002). He is currently a Professor in the Telecommunications Division of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, Chania - Crete, Greece, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota. His current research interests are primarily in signal processing for communications, and multi-way analysis. He is currently chair (2007 - 2008) of the Signal Processing for Communications Technical Committee (SPCOM-TC) of the IEEE SP Society, where he has served as member (2000 - 2005) and vice-chair (2005 - 2006). He is also a member of the Sensor Array and Multichannel processing Technical Committee (SAM-TC) of the IEEE SP Society (2004 - 2009). He has served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2000 - 2006), and IEEE Signal Processing Letters (2000 - 2002). Dr. Sidiropoulos received the NSF/CAREER award (Signal Processing Systems Program) in June 1998, and an IEEE Signal Processing Society best paper award in 2001. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing Society for 2008-2009, and an active consultant for industry in the areas of frequency hopping systems and signal processing for xDSL modems.
Professor Michael Paterakis
Michael Paterakis received his Diploma degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, his M.Sc. degree from the University of Connecticut, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Virginia, in 1984, 1986, and 1988, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. Since 1995, he is a faculty member in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Technical University of Crete, Greece, where he is currently a Professor and Vice Rector of the University responsible for Academic Affairs & Personnel. During the period 2000 – 2005, he served a five year term as the Director of the Telecommunication Systems Institute, a national research institute operating within the framework of the Technical University of Crete. During Sept. 1999 - Aug. 2001, he served a two year term as the Chairman of the ECE Department. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) at the University of Delaware, on the faculty of which he has been between 1988 and 1995.
His research interests include computer communication networks with emphasis on protocol design, modeling and performance evaluation of broadband wireline and wireless networks; queueing and applied probability theory and their application to computer communication networks and to distributed multimedia information systems. He has published over 100 papers in the abovementioned technical areas. He has served on the Technical Program Committees of major international conferences and as reviewer for almost all of the major IEEE Transactions and other international technical journals and conferences in his research areas. He also served as invited speakers co-chair for the 2004 IFIP Networking Conference, and as general co-chair for the 2005 14th IEEE LANMAN Workshop. Professor Paterakis is a senior member of the IEEE.
Professor Stavros Christodoulakis
Prof. Stavros Christodoulakis is Director of TUC/MUSIC, Professor of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Crete, and Member of the Scientific Board of the Institute of Telecommunications of Crete, Greece. Professor Christodoulakis holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto. Professor Christodoulakis has been professor in the Department of Computer Science of the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo, Associate Chairman and Chairman of Graduate Studies in the University of Waterloo, Member of the Board Directors of the Institute of Computer Research in the University of Waterloo, as well as the Institute of Speech of Greek Ministry Research and Technology, and the Lambrakis Research Foundation. He has also been Chairman of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Crete, as well as Director of the Laboratory of Telecommunications and the Laboratory of Software Engineering in the Technical University of Crete. Professor Stavros Christodoulakis is member of the Scientific Board of the DELOS II Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, and co-coordinator of the DELOS II Cluster “Audio-visual and non-traditional objects”.
Professor Michalis Zervakis
Prof. Michalis Zervakis holds a Ph.D degree from the University of Toronto, Department of Electrical Engineering, since 1990. He joined the Technical University of Crete on January 1995, where he is serving as Professor at the department of Electronic and Computer Engineering. He also joined the Telecommunication Systems Institute of Crete (TSI) since 2002. He served as Associate Editor in the “IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing” from 1994 to 1996. He was an assistant professor with the University of Minnesota-Duluth, USA, from September 1990 to December 1994. Prof. Zervakis is the director of the Digital Image and Signal Processing Laboratory (DISPLAY) at the Technical University of Crete. Under his direction, the lab is involved in research on modern aspects of signal processing, including estimation and constrained optimisation, multi-channel and multi-band signal processing, wavelet analysis for data/ image processing and compression, neural networks and fuzzy logic with applications in biomedical data analysis, imaging systems and integrated automation systems. Developments also include DSP-based real-time implementation.
Professor George Stavrakakis
George S. Stavrakakis (1956) received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1980. His D.E.A. in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering was obtained from I.N.S.A., Toulouse, in 1981 and his Ph.D. from "Paul Sabatier" University, Toulouse, in 1984. He has worked as a Research Fellow in the Robotics Laboratory of N.T.U.A. (1985-1988), and as a Visiting Scientist at Ispra, Italy (1989-1990). He is currently a Full Professor at the Technical University of Crete, Greece. His research interests include industrial technology applications of control and estimation theory, robotics, Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic, Decision Analysis for process reengineering, systems safety and reliability analysis, real-time industrial processes fault monitoring and diagnosis, alternative sources of energy modelling and automation.
His main research are energy systems modelling, fuzzy logic control, artificial neural networks for system identification, energy system data analysis and monitoring, industrial systems automation, distributed control systems, PC-sensors interfacing, Local Operating Network (LON) and smart card applications for secure data transfer and control. He is involved in numerous projects such as the development of the SCADA system for two wind farms of the island of Lemnos; a fuzzy logic controller for indoor environmental monitoring and control; the development of an Integrated Building Energy Management System for installation in new and existing buildings; the coordination of the Leonardo project SMART-BE for the development of a Web based tool for energy management in SMART buildings.
Professor Athanasios Liavas
Athanasios P. Liavas was born in Pyrgos Greece in June 9, 1966. He received the diploma and the PhD degrees from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, at 1989 and 1993, respectively.
From October 1993 to June 1995, he served in the Greek Army. He worked at INT, Evry, france, from 1996 to 1998 as a Marie-Curie Fellow. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Visiting Assistant at the Department of Computer Science, University of Ioannia. In 2001, he joined the Department of Mathematics, University of Aegean as an Assistant Professor. Since 2004, he has been with the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering as an Associate Professor.
Dr Liavas serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing and member of the IEEE Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee. His current research interests lie in the areas of Signal Processing for Communications and Information Theory.
Associate Professor Euripides Petrakis
Prof. Euripides Petrakis holds a Ph.D degree from the University of Crete in 1993. Between 1996 – 1998 he was a visiting researcher at the Dept. Computer Science of York University, Toronto, Canada and at GMD/IPSI Institute, Darmstadt, Germany. He joined the Technical University of Crete (TUC) on January 1998, where he is serving as associate professor at the Computer Science division of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and Lab Director of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He also joined the Telecommunication Systems Institute of Crete (TSI) since 2002. Prof. Petrakis is involved in research on modern aspects of information retrieval, multimedia Information systems, Web information systems, semantic Web and applications of Computer Vision. He is project coordinator for project TOWL (FP6-STREP:026896, “Time-determined ontology based information system for real time stock market analysis”.
Associate Professor Dionisios Pnevmatikatos
Dionisios N. Pnevmatikatos is an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete. His research interests include the architecture and design of computer and networking systems, and reconfigurablecomputing. Pnevmatikatos has a BS in computer science from the University of Crete, Greece, and an MSc and a PhD in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM.
Associate Professor Alexandros Potamianos
Alexandros Potamianos received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1990. He received the M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA in 1991 and 1995, respectively. He received the M.B.A. degree from Stern School of Business, NYU in 2002.
From 1991 to June 1993 he was a research assistant at the Robotics Lab, Harvard University. From 1993 to 1995 he was a research assistant at the Digital Signal Processing Lab at Georgia Tech. From 1995 to 1999 he was a Senior Technical Staff Member at the Speech and Image Processing Lab, AT&T Shannon Labs, Florham Park, NJ. From 1999 to 2002 he was a Technical Staff Member and Technical Supervisor at the Multimedia Communications Lab at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ. From 1999 to 2001 he was an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of Columbia University, New York, NY. In the spring of 2003, he joined the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece as an associate professor.
His current research interests include speech processing, analysis, synthesis and recognition, dialog and multi-modal systems, nonlinear signal processing, natural language understanding, artificial intelligence and multimodal child-computer interaction. Prof. Potamianos has authored or co-authored over sixty papers in professional journals and conferences. He is the co-author of the paper "Creating conversational interfaces for children" that received a 2005 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award. He holds four patents. He has been a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society since 1992 and he has served as a member of the IEEE Speech Technical Committee from 2000 to 2003.
Assistant Professor Matthias Bucher
Matthias Bucher was born in Switzerland in 1964. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1993 and 1999, respectively. The subject of his Ph.D. Thesis was the analytical charge-based compact modelling of MOSFETs.
In 1997, he was an invited researcher with LSI Logic, Milpitas, California. From 2000 to 2003, he was a visiting researcher at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, Greece, and held numerous consulting mandates in microelectronics industry.
In February 2004, he joined the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete (TUC), Chania, Greece, as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests are in the design of analog/RF integrated circuits, and in wide-band characterization and advanced compact modelling of single- and multi-gate nanoscale CMOS as well as high-voltage MOS devices. He also has coordinated the EKV3 MOSFET compact model code development.
Dr. Bucher is a member of the IEEE and of the Technical Chamber of Greece. He has authored or co-authored over 45 publications in international journals and conferences, as well as two book chapters, with over 270 citations from third authors. He is a regular reviewer for IEEE Trans. on Electron Devices, IEEE Trans. on CAD, Solid-State Electronics etc., and a member of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE Workshop on Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems.
Assistant Professor Ioannis Papaefstathiou
Prof. Ioannis Papaefstathiou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete and an Affiliated Senior Researcher at the Telecommunication Systems Institute. He is working in the design and implementation methodologies for networking systems with tightly coupled design parameters and highly constrained resources. He was granted a PhD degree in computer science at the University of Cambridge UK, in 2001, an M.Sc. degree (Ranked 1st) from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 1996 and a B.Sc. degree (Ranked 2nd) from the University of Crete, Greece in 1996. From 1994-1996 he was a VLSI systems engineer at ICS-FORTH, from 1997-2000 he was a Research Associate at the Systems Research Group, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and from 2001-2005 a visiting assistant Professor at the University of Crete, Greece and a research associate at ICS-FORTH from 2001-2005. He has published more than 40 papers in IEEE-sponsored journals and conferences. He has been the prime Guest Editor for an issue of IEEE Micro Magazine and for one in IEEE Design & Test Magazine. He has served as a scientific evaluator for the Commission of the European Communities (FP6-IST and FP7-ICT), as well as for the Greek General Secretariat for Research and Technology. He has participated in many European R&D Programmes, ACTS (ARCHES), ESPRIT(Telegraphos, ASICCOM), IST(Pegasus, PRO3, ADAMAS).
Assistant Professor George Karystinos
George N. Karystinos was born in Athens, Greece, on April 12, 1974. He received the Diploma degree in computer engineering and science (five-year program) from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 1997 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York, Buffalo, in 2003. In August 2003, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Wright State University, Dayton, OH as an Assistant Professor. Since September 2005, he has been an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece. His current research interests are in the areas of communication theory and systems, coding theory, adaptive signal processing, wireless communications, spreading code and signal waveform design, cooperative communications, and neural networks. Prof. Karystinos was the recipient of the 2003 IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award and the 2001 IEEE International Conference on Telecommunications Best Paper Award. He is a member of the IEEE Communications, Signal Processing, Information Theory, and Computational Intelligence Societies and a member of Eta Kappa Nu.