Group Members

Georgios Papaioannou was born in Athens, Greece in 1974. He received a BSc in Computer Science in 1996 and a PhD degree in Computer Graphics and Pattern Recognition in 2001, both from the University of Athens, Greece. Since 1997, he has worked as a research fellow in many research and development projects. From 2002 till 2007 he has worked as a virtual reality software engineer at the Foundation of the Hellenic World. Dr. Papaioannou has been teaching elementary and advanced computer graphics, programming and human-computer interaction courses since 2002. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business and his research is focused on real-time computer graphics algorithms, photorealistic rendering, virtual reality, three-dimensional pattern recognition and computational archaeology. Prof. Papaioannou is the AUEB principal investigator for the FP7 EU-funded STREP project PRESIOUS. He is also a member of ACM, SIGGRAPH, Eurographics Association and has been a member of the program committees of many conferences in the above fields.

Personal web site: http://www.aueb.gr/users/gepap or http://graphics.cs.aueb.gr/users/gepap (mirror)

Pavlos Mavridis was born in Kozani, Greece in 1981. He is a computer graphics programmer at the Foundation of the Hellenic World, working on the design and development of software and hardware infrastructure for the Virtual Reality installations at the cultural center of the foundation. He received his BSc in Computer Science in 2004 and his MSc in Computational Science in 2006, both from the University of Athens, Greece. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Real Time Global Illumination Algorithms at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business. His research interests include real-time and offline photorealistic image synthesis, global illumination algorithms using monte carlo methods and high performance graphics.

Personal web site: http://www.pmavridis.com

Konstantinos Vardis was born in Athens, Greece in 1982. He received a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Sussex, UK in 2004 and an MSc in Virtual Environments and Visualization from the University of Hull, UK in 2005. Since 2005, he has worked as a software engineer with specialization in 3D real-time computer graphics and visualization in large-scale projects in the public and private sector. including SEGA – The Creative Assembly in Horsham, UK, where he has been credited for his work on the graphics engine and GUI of the award winning pc video game Empire: Total War. He has also worked as a medical visualization software engineer at Evorad in Athens, Greece in the development of GPU- and GPGPU-based software for the visualization of 3D medical volumes. Konstantinos Vardis is currently collaborating as lead software engineer with Oraton Simulation Intelligence Technologies (Google Partners) in Athens, Greece with main focus in geoinformatics visualization and is also occupied as a freelance programmer and has developed applications for a large range of systems such as iphone applications, e-commerce solutions, and third party game tools. For the next 3 years he will be pursuing his PhD on real-time rendering techniques for large virtual environments at the department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business, under the supervision of Prof. Georgios Papaioannou.

Personal web site: http://www.kostasvardis.com

Anthousis Andreadis was born in Kilkis, Greece in 1984. He received his BSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Thessaly in 2006 and his MSc in Computer Science from Athens University of Economics and Business in 2008. From 2007-2013 he worked as a computer graphics engineer at the Foundation of the Hellenic World with main responsibilities the design and development of software and hardware infrastructure for Virtual Reality solutions and applications. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Computational Archaeology at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business under the supervision of Prof. Georgios Papaioannou. His research interests include real-time rendering, virtual reality environments and archaeometry.

Georgios Tsatiris was born in Piraeus, Greece in 1988. He received his BSc on Informatics in 2012 from the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). In January of the same year, he finished his graduate thesis entitled “Camera based, three-dimensional cursor tracking”, supervised by Prof. G. Papaioannou. Since then, he has developed an interest in the field of Computer Vision and its applications in Human-Computer Interaction. As of October 2012, he is pursuing an MSc on Computer Science in AUEB and, in collaboration with Prof. Papaioannou, he is organizing and teaching a supplementary class in the undergraduate HCI course, covering the basic principles of Computer Vision. His research interests include image processing techniques, feature extraction, 3D scanning and predictive pattern recognition.

Anastasios Gkaravelis was born in Larissa, Greece in 1989. He studies computer science at the Department of Informatics at Athens University of Economics and Business. His research interests are focused on computer graphics and more precisely on real-time and offline global illumination algorithms and photorealistic rendering. He is currently working on his degree thesis on real-time global illumination algorithms. He is also interested in parallel, distributed and ubiquitous computing.

Charalampos Thomas was born in Patras, Greece in 1992. He studies Informatics at Athens University of Economics and Business since 2010. Worked a year (2012-2013) as an assistant systems administrator for the university's student labs. His research and scientific interests are focused on pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, computer graphics and computer vision. He is currently working on his degree thesis on hardware-accelerated image-based geometry feature extraction.

Alumni

Athanasios Gaitatzes was born in 1967. He received his PhD in 2012 for his doctoral thesis "Interactive Diffuse Global Illumination Discretization Methods for Dynamic Environments" from the University of Cyprus in collaboration with the Computer Graphics Group of the Athens University of Economics and Business. He received his Master of Science (MSc) in 1989 in Computer Science from Purdue University at W. Lafayette Indiana, with specialization in Computer Graphics and his Bachelor of Science (BSc) in 1991 in Computer Science from the same University.

From 1999 to 2012 he was employed as Virtual Reality Systems Developer at the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) in Greece where he was responsible for the design and development of both hardware and software infrastructure and content creation for the Virtual Reality exhibits at the Cultural Center of FHW. In 2007-2008 he was Project Manager of the Virtual Reality 30-minute stereoscopic production “The Battle of Chaeronia” produced for the municipality of Chaeronia. From 1991 to 1998 he was employed as a Software Engineer at the Advanced Systems Division of IBM where he was responsible for the design and development of software libraries for 3D programming. He developed patents for security of networks and data on the Internet and systems for the easier navigation of users on the Internet. During this research he filed and received four patents.

Based on his extensive experience in the design and development of software he has taken part in several European research projects as an analyst and technical advisor. His research interests include real-time computer graphics, photo realistic visualization, rendering techniques, visibility algorithms, real-time walkthroughs and flythroughs of virtual environments, client/server graphics applications and realistic real-time avatars. He has several publications in international journals in the arena of new technologies and cultural heritage. He is also interested in new methods and technologies as they are applied to e-learning. He is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH, Eurographics and HGDA. 

Personal web site: http://www.virtuality.gr/gaitat

Bill Triantafillou was born in Athens, Greece in 1983. He received a BSc in 2007 from the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Crete, Greece. In 2010 he got accepted to the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business as a graduate student, where in the following year he took the postgraduate class in Advanved Computer Graphics. His Master Thesis was titled "Histogram-based illumination function and reconstruction" and supervised by Prof. G. Papaioannou. He is currently completing his postgraduate studies, with a view of commencing a PhD in Computer Graphics in the US. His research interests lie mainly in Real Time Global Illumination Algorithms.

Constantinos Kalampokis was born in Athens, Greece in 1986. He entered the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2004 and received his 4-year B.Sc. in 2010. During his studies, he was honored for his work in the Computer Graphics and Innovation and entrepreneurship courses in 2007. In 2009, as part of his degree thesis he developed a deferred rendering graphics engine along with Lampros Tambourlos under the supervision of Dr. G. Papaioannou and Prof. Th. Theoharis. In 2010, he was accepted in the Athens University of Economics and Business Computer Science M.Sc. programme (dept. of Informatics), where he is currently pursuing a M.Sc. degree. For his MSc thesis, he developed a pure GPU-based Bidirectional Path Tracer using NVidia Optix 2.1.

Personal Blog : http://heart-touching-graphics.blogspot.com/

Georgios - Alexandros Koulieris was born in Crete, Greece in 1986. He finished High School in Palaiochora Chanion, Crete and got accepted to the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications. During his studies he showed great interest in computer generated graphics and took two relevant undergraduate classes taught by Prof. Theoharis Theoharis. Between Oktober 2008 and March 2009 he was an intern at INRIA Sophia Antipolis in France, team REVES working with soft shadowing algorithms under the supervision of Professor George Drettakis and Theoharis Theoharis. He completed his thesis "Efficient Soft Shadow Mapping" and received his BSc in 2009. His research interests include global and local illumination models algorithms. He is currently pursuing a MSc in Computer Science in the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business and also working as a researcher.

Personal web site: http://graphics.cs.aueb.gr/users/koulieris

Charilaos Papadopoulos became interested in computer graphics at the age of 8, when he played a computer game by one John Carmack. At the age of 21 he took a class in Introduction to Computer Graphics in AUEB, and has been hooked on them (along with OpenGL and GLSL) ever since. His interests lie mainly in real time approximations of lighting effects (global and local). Currently he is completing his undergraduate studies at the Department of Computer Science of the AUEB, with a view of commencing a PHD in Computer Science in the Fall of ’09 in the United States and is also a teaching assistant in the OpenGL lab course (Introductory Computer Graphics). Research-wise, he is currently working (among other things) on a novel approach to accurately simulating underwater lighting effects in real-time 3D graphics. He is also interested in networking, mainly peer-2-peer systems over the Internet.

Personal web site: http://graphics.cs.aueb.gr/users/papado

Maria – Lida Menexi was born in Athens, Greece in 1983. In 2006, she received a BSc and in 2008 a MSc, both in Computer Science from the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business. In 2005 she took the undergraduate and in 2007 the postgraduate class in Computer Graphics, which was followed by her Master Thesis, titled “Pre-calculated Volumetric Illumination for Real-time Graphics”, supervised by Dr. G. Papaioannou. Her research interests include global illumination algorithms in real-time graphics and graph theory. She is currently working as a developer and a researcher.