Team

Demetrios G. Eliades

University of Cyprus

Demetris Eliades holds a BSc/MSc (2004) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, an MSc (2005) in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a PhD (2011) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cyprus. Since 2019, he is a Research Assistant Professor at the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, of the University of Cyprus. His research is focused on monitoring, control and security of smart water networks. He has authored and co-authored articles published in journals and conferences proceedings, in the areas of water systems, building systems, power systems, control and robotics. He is the Technical Coordinator of the H2020 PathoCERT project.

Stelios Vrachimis

University of Cyprus

Stelios G. Vrachimis received the Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2020 and 2011 respectively, and a M.Sc. in Control Systems from Imperial College London, in 2012. From 2012 to 2020, he was a graduate-level Researcher at the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, at the University of Cyprus, where he is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate. His research interests include the optimization, real-time state estimation, fault-diagnosis and fault-adaptive control of critical infrastructure systems, with applications focused on water distribution systems. He has volunteered as a reviewer to IEEE transactions and conferences, and has served as an associate editor to the ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. He is a member of IEEE, the Cyprus Technical Chamber, and Cyprus Young Water Professionals.

Kleanthis Malialis

University of Cyprus

Kleanthis Malialis received his MEng in Computer Systems and Software Engineering and PhD in Computer Science degrees from the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, UK in 2010 and 2014 respectively. His PhD focus was on multiagent reinforcement learning and investigated its applicability to network intrusion response. He then joined the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL) as a Research Associate, part of an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between UCL and a data analytics startup. He subsequently joined the startup as a Data Scientist. Prior joining KIOS CoE, Kleanthis was working at the Telegraph as a Data Scientist where his focus was on building predictive models using machine learning algorithms.

Assistant Prof. Stelios Timotheou

University of Cyprus

Stelios Timotheou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a faculty member at the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, of the University of Cyprus. He holds a Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Summa Cum Laude, 2005) from the National Technical University of Athens, an MSc in Communications and Signal Processing (Distinction, 2006) and a PhD in Intelligent Systems and Networks (2010), both from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London. In previous appointments, he was a Research Associate at KIOS, a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Cyprus, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on monitoring, control and optimization of critical infrastructure systems, with emphasis on intelligent transportation systems and communication systems. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a member of the ACM and a member of the Technical Chamber of Cyprus. He is the recipient of the 2017 ‘Cyprus Young Researcher in Physical Sciences & Engineering’ Award, by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.

Ioannis Tzortzis

University of Cyprus

Ioannis Tzortzis received the Diploma Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Higher Technical Institute, Cyprus, in 2003 and his BSc Degree in Electrical Engineering and Informatics from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, in 2007. He completed his MSc studies and PhD studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Cyprus in 2009 and 2015, respectively. Following his PhD, he worked as a research scientist (until January 2016) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus. Between February 2016 and February 2018, he worked at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Since March 2018 he is a member of KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence.

His research interests include stochastic dynamical decision and control systems, optimization subject to distributional ambiguity, minimax dynamic games, and Markov Decision theory. Throughout his academic career, he had the opportunity to contact research in a broad range of problems and get involved in numerous interdisciplinary projects in the areas of information theory and communication, systems biology and population dynamics, active fault diagnosis, etc. His research outcomes are published in top-ranked, peer- reviewed, engineering and applied mathematics journals and conference proceedings, that include SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Systems and Control Letters, and others.
In addition, in 2018 he received a Didaktor fellowship funded by the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation.

Alireza Moghaddam

University of Cyprus

Alireza Moghaddam is a Research Associate at the KIOS Research and Innovation Centre of Excellence at the University of Cyprus. He received his BSc degree in Water Engineering from the University of Birjand, Iran in 2010. and MSc degree in Water Resources Engineering from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran in 2013. He completed his PhD in Water Resources Engineering at the Urmia University, Iran in 2019. He has more than eight years of teaching experience at the universities and industrial experience in real water distribution networks field. His research has focused on optimal design, optimal hydraulic and quality management in water distribution systems, leakage management, water quality and hydraulic model calibration, management of chemical contamination events in water distribution systems. His other research interests include smart water networks, leakage detection modelling, real-time monitoring and control in water distribution systems.

Lydia Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia

KWR Water Research Institute

Lydia S. Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia has an engineering background, with expertise and research interests focused mainly on computational modelling and hydroinformatics across a wide range of subjects: Water Supply and Distribution Systems, Smart Meters, System Dynamics Modelling, the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, Serious Gaming, the Circular Economy and Artificial Intelligence techniques for Water Systems.

Lydia Tsiami

KWR Water Research Institute

Lydia Tsiami is a civil engineer specializing in hydraulic engineering and water management (MEng, NTUA). During her thesis, she developed a deep learning model to detect cyber-physical attacks in water distribution networks. Her passion lies in finding new ways to use artificial intelligence to solve water management problems.

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University of Exeter

André Artelt

Bielefeld University

André Artelt studied B.Sc. Congnitive Informatics (2017) and M.Sc. Intelligent Systems (2019) at Bielefeld University.

Since 2019 he is a researcher in the Machine Learning group at Bielefeld University. Prior to that he spent some time in industry working in the software development department at Schüco International KG (2013-2019).

His research focuses on eXplainable AI.

Inaam Ashraf

Bielefeld University

Inaam Ashraf completed MSc Data Analytics from University of Hildesheim in April 2022. He has worked with SAP Security Research for over an year where he also completed his Master Thesis in the area of  Anomaly Detection using Deep Learning.

He also holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering (2005) and a Master in Business Administration (2009) and has worked as a Financial Analyst at the State Bank of Pakistan for a number of years.

He began his Doctoral Studies at the Bielefeld University in May 2022 focusing on Deep Learning for Water Distribution Networks.

Ulrike Kuhl

Bielefeld University

Ulrike Kuhl holds a BSc (2012) and MSc (2014) in Cognitive Science from University Osnabrück. Studying developmental neural correlates of literacy and numeracy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, she was awarded a PhD in Psychology from Leipzig University in 2019. Afterwards, she joined the machine learning group at University Bielefeld as a Postdoctoral researcher. Her current academic interests lie in the field of eXplainable AI, focusing on the development of usable explanations for automated decision making and machine learning models that meet the cognitive requirements of end users.

Alexander Schulz

Bielefeld University

Alexander Schulz defended his Ph.D. thesis with the title 'Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction: Variations, Applications, Interpretations' at CITEC, Bielefeld University in early 2017. Currently, he is working as a post doc in the Machine Learning group at Bielefeld University. He has collaborated with groups from the Aalto University in Finland, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the University of Namur in Belgium and the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. His scientific contributions are in the areas of dimensionality reduction for data visualization, model interpretability, transfer learning and myoelectric control.

Paul Stahlhofen

Bielefeld University

Paul Stahlhofen is a computer scientist holding a B.Sc. in cognitive informatics (11/2019) and a M.Sc. in intelligent systems (09/2022). He collected first experiences with water research during an internship at the Umweltforschungszentrum (UFZ, engl.: Environmental Research Center) in Leipzig in March 2022. After that, he continued to work for the UFZ as a developer for a database storing chemical compounds. During his master thesis in 2022 he applied the Machine Learning concept of adversarial attacks to leakage detectors in water distributions system. His aim is to contribute to an improvement of leakage detectors by increasing their overall robustness against potential adversaries.

Janine Strotherm

Bielefeld University

Janine is holding a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics (and a Bachelor for teaching in the same subjects) (April 2020),  and a M.Sc. in Mathematics (May 2022) from Bielefeld University. In her master thesis she worked on theoretical and practical investigation of training overparameterized neural networks using natural gradient descent.
She also has some work experience as a Data Scientist in a local start up and as a teacher.

Since June 2022 she is a doctoral student in the Machine Learning group at Bielefeld University. Her research is centered around fairness enhancing machine learning algorithms in the field of water distribution networks.

Valerie Vaquet

Bielefeld University

Valerie holds a B.Sc. in Cognitive Informatics (2017) and a M.Sc. in Intelligent Systems (2020) from Bielefeld University. Currently she works in the Machine Learning group at Bielefeld University as a researcher and doctoral student. Her research focuses on sensor drift adaptation and learning from non-stationary data streams.

Athanasios Yannacopoulos

Athens University of Economics and Business

Athanasios Yannacopoulos is Professor in the Department of Statistics. His research interests focus on Stochastic Analysis and Applications, Stochastic Differential Equations and Mathematical Modelling with the use of Random and Deterministic Dynamical Systems with applications in Insurance, Finance and Modern Technologies. He has studied in the University of Athens (1989, Ptychion in Physics) and did his PhD in the University of Warwick, UK, (1993) on Statistical Properties of Dynamical Systems.

His teaching duties, in undergraduate and postgraduate level, include courses related to Stochastic Analysis and its Applications, the theory of Stochastic Processes and its Applications, Probability Theory and Financial Mathematics. His research work includes publications in the fields of Stochastic Differential Equations (ordinary and partial), Backward Stochastic Differential Equations and applications (e.g. in economics, finance and modern technologies), Stochastic Control Theory and Mathematical Finance. His research is published in international scientific journals such as Journal of Differential Equations, Journal of Mathematical Economics, International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, Indiana University Mathematics Journal, Scandinavian Actuarial Journal.

Nikitas Pittis

Athens University of Economics and Business

Prof.Nikitas Pittis is the Chief Economist of AssetWise Capital Management. He is also Professor in Financial Econometrics at the Department of Banking and Financial Management of the University of Piraeus, since 2000. The impact of his scientific work ranks him in the top 8% of economists in the Europe (based on RePEc Ranking: Research Papers in Economics Ranking).
After completing his PhD at the University of London. Dr. Pittis worked as a senior research associate at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London and then as an economic analyst in the research department of UBS in Zurich. He was also member of the Board of Economic Advisors at the Ministry of Economics and Finance of the Greek Government.
Professor Pittis has published more than forty research papers in highly ranked academic journals. His work is widely recognized, as documented in many of citations to his name in ‘Google’ and ‘Google Scholar’ search engines, in academia and financial and banking institutions all over the world. In 1995 his work was selected for inclusion in ‘Advances in Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management’. He has co-ordinated a big number of research projects funded by various national and international organizations and foundations. He has presented his work in numerous of prestigious international scientific conferences and has given academic and public lectures at Universities and Research Institutes all over the world.

Panagiotis Samartzis

Athens University of Economics and Business

Dr. Panagiotis Samartzis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Macedonia. He is Research Associate at the University of Piraeus and the General Manager at AssetWise Capital Management. He holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Athens, an MSc in Mathematics and Finance from Imperial College and a Ph.D. in Financial Econometrics from the University of Piraeus. His research interest focuses on decision making under uncertainty and ambiguity. His academic work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Forecasting, Environmental and Resource Economics and Open Research Europe.

Sotiris Georgana

Athens University of Economics and Business

Sotiris Georganas is a Reader (Associate Professor) at the Department of Economics, City University London. His primary area of research up to now has been in auction experiments, models of bounded rationality and applied game theory. Recently, he spent some time visiting CESS, Department of Economics, New York University.

His previous job was as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of London, Royal Holloway. From 2007 until 2009 he has worked at the Ohio State University as a post doctoral researcher with John Kagel. His doctoral research was done at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics, under Reinhard Selten. While in graduate school Sotiris Georganas spent his second year (2004-2005) visiting the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (as part of the European Doctoral Programme) and working with Rosemarie Nagel.

His undergraduate studies were also in Economics at the University of Bonn from 1999 to 2003. He spent his last year visiting the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His Diplomarbeit (similar to a master’s thesis), done under Benny Moldovanu, was an experimental study about auctions with resale.

Ebun Akinsete

Athens University of Economics and Business

Dr. Ebun Akinsete is a Senior Researcher at ICRE8 and the Head of the Department of Stakeholder Analysis and Decision Support Systems at ICRE8 and UN SDSN Greece. She is an Associate Lecturer at the School of Applied Social Studies, Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen), and Senior Partner with Nigerian-based consultancy GEN Sustainable Solutions.  With a BSc (Hons) in Architectural Technology, MSc in Project Management and PhD in Urban Regeneration and Sustainable Communities, she has several years of both industrial and academic experience in Europe, Asia and Africa; collaborating with governmental agencies, NGOs, aid organizations, academic institutions, the private sector and local communities.  Her main areas of interest are sustainable development, urban regeneration, SDG policy and implementation, community development, climate change mitigation, transition management, renewable energy, stakeholder participation, participatory planning, evaluation and impact assessment for sustainability, and sustainability in developing nations.

Roy Brouwer

Athens University of Economics and Business

Roy Brouwer is Executive Director of the Water Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in Zürich, member of the External Advisory Board of the Vienna Technical University Doctoral Program on Water Resource Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Water Resources and Economics. Before joining the University of Waterloo in 2016, he was head of the department Environmental Economics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Georgios Papayiannis

Athens University of Economics and Business

Georgios Papayiannis is Lecturer of Computational Mathematics at Hellenic Naval Academy, Department of Naval Sciences, Section of Mathematics since May 2020. He holds a PhD in Robust Decision Making and Risk Assessment under Uncertainty from Athens University of Economics and Business, Department of Statistics. His research interests lie in the scientific areas of robust decision making, risk quantification under uncertainty, computational and functional statistics, statistical learning methods and aggregation schemes with applications in statistical processes monitoring and prediction.

Alina Velias

Athens University of Economics and Business

Alina Velias has recently completed a PhD in Economics, specialising in behavioural and experimental aspects of applied microeconomics. Her interests are in non-monetary motives (such as altruism) and aspects (subjective wellbeing, social capital) of human welfare – and the related policy implications. Her first degree is a BSc Philosophy and Economics (LSE), after she I has worked in the private sector before going on to complete an MSc Behavioural Economics and PhD Economics at City, University of London. During this time she has also spent one year on an academic visit to Universitad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). Alina has also worked as a part of Behavioural Economics and Data Science Unit (BDU)at the Financial Conduct Authority (UK) and with the Office for the National Statistics (UK). More recently, she has conducted market analysis projects for the Hellenic Competitioon Comission (HCC, Greece). Alina currently works on the ERC Waterfutures project and also teaches on the EMSc Behavioural Science programme at the LSE.