Tech Talks Central

Dr. Christos Tsambaris, Nuclear Physicist & Oceanographer of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, talks about nuclear physics, environmental protection, and advancements in marine technology such as the Katerina system he helped develop suitable for detecting radioactivity in polluted waters. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Angeliki Chroni, Sr. Researcher at the Institute of Biosciences & Applications at Demokritos National Center for Scientific Research, converses with Tina about the root causes of atherosclerosis, how it is diagnosed and treated. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Maria Christina Chatziioannou takes us into a unique field, that of social and economic history research, with a more specialised interest in the history of trade and entrepreneurs. She explains the term ‘The biography of the Entrepreneur’ and what it entails knowing the story of significant people who impacted our lives in the past. She explains how we can learn from history and how significant it is to base your research on archives and tools. Last, she answers our question on whether we can learn from entrepreneurs of the past. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central

Dr. Constantinos Potamitis is a PostDoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Biology, Medicinal Chemistry and Biotechnology, National Hellenic Research Foundation. In his interview, he talks about Virtual Screening, a computer simulation technique used as the first step in the medicinal drugs discovery process. Virtual Screening reduces the need for the costly and resource-intensive manual lab experiments which determine the effects of linking/combining molecules and proteins. Current research done in the Lab of Molecular Analysis, focuses on how to improve the accuracy of existing models. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Dimou tells us about her research in sign and 3D languages, describing the impact of facial expressions, body posture and gestures to the understanding of meanings. The target of her research team is to use these results for the deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as for experimentation in advanced projects, like MOBOT (MObile roBOT) and other applications, that promote independent living for elderly people or persons with reduced mobility and other kinds of disabilities. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Amiridis a Senior Researcher at National Observatory of Athens talks about BEYOND: a Centre of Excellence for Earth Observation based monitoring. BEYOND is a monitoring, aggregation, storage and analysis point for data related to natural phenomena. Data is collected from a variety of probes (satellites, seismic activity probes etc.) in collaboration with leading institutions. The vision of BEYOND is to become the central hub for natural phenomena in the region and provide services to businesses and the public sector spanning a wide range of applications, from real-time notification to task-force deployment strategy, recovery planning and forecasting. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks Central

Dr. Vangelis Gerasopoulos, Research Director of Institute for Environmental Research & Sustainable Development and an expert on atmospheric physics, talks about how he got started with science and the impact of the economic crisis on atmospheric pollution, in Greece. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

Air pollution remains a major environmental issue, with many implications in several aspects of our life and the environment we live in. Dr. Evangelia Diapouli talks about the efforts of her team, at the Environmental Radioactivity Lab in the Institute of Nuclear & Radiological Sciences & Technology, Energy & Safety at NCSR Demokritos, the measurements they take daily at their research station in Athens (another one is being built at Mt. Chelmos, of the Peloponnese) and the impact of the results in our lives. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Smart devices are getting smaller and smaller but the main problem is the high power consumption of these devices. Novel materials like graphene, silicene, semiconductors and topological insulators might help us solve this energy efficiency problem. Dr Athanasios Dimoulas, Research Director in the field of Materials for Nanoelectronics at NCSR Demokritos, explains us what those materials can really do and how the nanoelectronics industry can benefit from them. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Maria Koutsobogera, a Researcher at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP), talks about the state-of-the-art research in Multimodal Communication, Information Processing and Retrieval. Research in Multimodal communication designs and optimizes models in order to create a more natural experience in agent-based communications. Recent studies on those models investigate applications beyond the improvement of context awareness and conversation flow, moving into sociological and psychological analysis of user groups. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Evangelos Gogolides, holder of 8 patents and author of many publications, talks about his team’s research on nanostructured surfaces. He explains in simple terms what nanotexturing is -a term they coined- and how the method chemically modifies surfaces using plasma processing; thus creating water, oil, ice & microorganism repellent surfaces useful, for different applications, from 100-fold sensitive protein microarrays to self cleaning clothes. He goes on to compare research in Greece and abroad and talks about the opportunities in Greece for local researchers. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Christos Riziotis, Associate Researcher of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF) discusses about his research project on photonic sensors and offers his advice to students who want to pursue science as a career path. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

The main problem in the field of neutrino astronomy is the unambiguous detection and reconstruction of the neutrino induced signal. The KM3NeT collaboration with participants from Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Ireland, and Romania have been designing a deep-sea neutrino telescope to be built in the Mediterranean. Dr. Christos Markou, Director of Research at NCSR Demokritos, is talking about their research on multi-messenger neutrino astronomy and what they expect to find out in the next years. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. Garyfallia Drossopoulou explains in simple terms what neural stem cell development from the human olfactory mucosa(in the nose) means for patients with spine injuries and other related health problems. She dwells into the purpose of cultivating such cells in order to get concentrated populations but also capable of multiplying & self-renewing. She explains the ‘olfactory’ term and the solution it entails to finding the right tissue without ethical boundaries. Ending, she gives us her own insights on whether young students should follow her footsteps in medical research and what they should expect from the science. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

In this interview, Maria Sachpazi, Research Director & Acting Director of the Institute of Geodynamics of the National Observatory of Athens, chats with Tina about the European Researcher's Night, what inspired her to pursue science and research, and whether seismologists today have the ability to predict the next "big" earthquake. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

Dr. George Kordas, Research Director at NCSR Demokritos, describes the very important project his research team is working on, during the last six years: delivering drugs for personalized chemotherapy to cancer patients. He talks about what inspired him to make this project the scope of his life, as well as the prospects of his life-saving method for the future. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Valerie Westerduin, HR Recruiter from Booking.com join us at Tech Talks Central to discuss the skillsets that developers should possess, how booking.com helps employees evolve professionally, and share insights on what it’s like to work for booking.com. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

John Lunn, Lean Evangelist for EMEA PayPal, covers their major Mobile World Congress 2014 announcements; the Samsung Galaxy S5 which will allow payments with your fingerprint and the collaboration on the Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 Watch. How PayPal is more interested in making our lives more convenient and not only secure. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks Central.

We chat with Magnus Ekenheim and Anna Aleryd from Sony Mobile about the opportunities Internet of Things (IoT) presents for application developers, the Sony Smart Eyeglasses and Smart Watch, and how they see IoT affecting consumers in the future. Interviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.

Jordi Bacaria, counselor-at-law at Global Legal Data, dives into consumer privacy and the guidelines mobile developers should follow to embed privacy practices in mobile app development. cInterviewed by Tina Miteko for Tech Talks Central.