Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas

Partner Information

  • Partner Full Name: Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas
  • Partner Short Name: CERTH
  • Country: Greece
  • Website: www.certh.gr

The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) was founded in March 2000, it is a legal entity governed by private law with non-profit status, supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation (GSRI) of the Greek Ministry of Development. CERTH suggests one of the most important Research Centers in Greece with a main mission: The promotion of innovative research for the benefit of society. Dedicated to this purpose, CERTH lies at the forefront of basic, applied and technological research to provide solutions to society’s modern challenges. CERTH combines its unique research facilities and highly qualified research personnel, to transform scientific knowledge into innovative technological applications, aiming to strengthen the national economy and respond to the needs of society at national and international levels. CERTH is essentially a self-supported Research Centre generating an average annual turnover of more than 50 million euros (55,6 million euros in 2022) coming from competitive research projects at 77%  bilateral industrial research contracts at 13%, and government institutional funding at 10%, proving its essentially self-supported operating model. It is one of the top research and development employers for highly qualified personnel in the region of Northern Greece, playing an important role in the creation of highly skilled jobs, which is demonstrated by the qualitative and quantitative increase of its staff in recent years. CERTH places a strong emphasis on innovation, which is demonstrated -among others- by the establishing collaborations with the industry. The commercial exploitation of the mature, innovative, technological findings of CERTH, has led to the creation of 18 spin-off companies with significant economic activity, including the attraction of financing from investment funds. 

Key persons

Dr Spiros Nikolopoulos

Dr Spiros Nikolopoulos received his diploma degree in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras in 2002, while in 2004 he received the MSc degree in Computer Science & Technology from the same university. In 2012 he was awarded a PhD by the Electronic Engineering Department of Queen Mary, University of London, for his doctoral thesis on Semantic Multimedia Analysis using knowledge and context. He has been actively engaged in research and development activities from 2000, initially as a research assistant in the university of Patras (2000-2004) and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2004-2005), and later on as a research associate (2005-2012) and post-doctoral researcher (2012-2020) when he joined the Multimedia Knowledge and Social Media Analytics Laboratory (MKLab) of the Information Technologies Institute (ITI) in the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH). As of mid-2020 he holds the position of Researcher (Grade C) in the same institute. He has been also a founding member of the spin-off company Infalia (2014), where he is still active.

Dr Dimitrios Tsaopoulos

Dr Dimitrios Tsaopoulos is a Research Director (Grade A) on the field of Biomechanics in CERTH/IBO. He graduated with a BSc from the University of Thessaly, Greece, in the field of Sports Science. He holds a PhD in Biomechanics from the Manchester Metropolitan University. After the end of his PhD studies he was appointed as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Structure & Motion Lab (SML) at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in University of London. His research interests are in the areas of Biomechanics of bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion and in the latest modelling and simulation techniques to analyse 3D musculoskeletal system dynamics in humans and animals. Dimitris aspires to the advancement of research and technologies in areas of human and animal-movement biology, aiming at diagnosis, assessment and treatment of locomotor dysfunction. He has participated in more than 25 National and European research projects.