Senior researchers with many years of industrial experience and a solid research background form the core of the group. Other scientists from other companies/universities are collaborating with the group on a part-time basis. The group has a total of 5 permanent senior members specializing in different areas of optical networking. In addition, several students work on topics related with the activities of the group towards their thesis.

The biographical profiles of the permanent group members are presented below:

Dr. Ioannis Tomkos, is the Associate Dean of Athens Information Technology Center since June 2004. He joined AIT as a tenured Associate Professor in July 2002. In December 2002, he became an Adjunct Faculty at the Information Networking Institute of of Carnegie-Mellon University, PA, USA. Since September 2005 Dr. Tomkos has the rank of tenured Full Professor. At AIT he also serves as the Head of the “High Speed Networks and Optical Communication (NOC)” Research Group which performs advanced technical and techno-economic studies related with its areas of inteerst. His group participates in a number of EU funded research projects in which Dr. Tomkos has leading role. He is the elected Chairman of the EU COST 291 project entitled “Towards Digital Optical Networks”, a Steering Board member in the EU IST SSA project BReATH, Leader of a Joint Project in the framework of e-Photon/ONE2 EU NoE project and the Technical Manager of the EU IST STREP project TRIUMPH. The level of funding attracted by AIT due to the research activities of the group in these projects exceeds 600K Euros.
His professional career started in 1996, when he joined the Optical Communications Group of University of Athens, Greece where he participated in several national and European research projects (e.g. ACTS, COST) as a Research Fellow. His work there was related with WDM technologies for all-optical networks (including characterization of optical components, all-optical signal processing, design of novel optical cross-connects, short pulse generation, and dispersion compensation) and with digital transmission systems for access networks (e.g. ADSL, HFC technologies). In January 2000, he joined the Photonics Research and Test Center of Corning Inc. as a Senior Research Scientist. His research focused in theoretical and experimental studies of transport phenomena related with WDM optical networks. He studied extensively the performance and design issues of metropolitan/regional area optical networks and led successfully several projects. He was then subsequently involved in studies related with transport performance and technology trends in ultra-long-haul optical networks. In June 2002 he was elected a Faculty member at the Computer Engineering Department of University of Patras, Greece.
He has co-authored over 40 articles published in international scientific journals/magazines/books (25 in IEEE sponsored Journals) and over 100 presentations at conferences/workshops and other events (over 75 archival publications in conference proceedings). He has authored a book chapter in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Telecommunications and Signal Processing, related with metropolitan area broadband networks. He has received several invitations from conference technical program committees to present his research results as Invited/Tutorial Speaker or to coordinate a set of presentations as Session Chair. His published articles have received more than 250 citations. He holds 2 patents and he has several patent applications pending. Dr. Tomkos has acted as consultant for high-tech companies. In 1991, 1992 and 1993 he received Educational Scholarships by the Hellenic Institute of National Scholarships. In 1998 he received a Grant and also the "Best Paper" Award from IEEE-LEOS. In 1999 he received a Scholarship from SPIE. In 2000 he awarded by Corning Inc. for his contributions in the development of a new optical fiber. In 2002, he received the "2001 Corning Research Outstanding Publication Award".
Dr. Tomkos is actively offering his services to the international scientific community. He is the Vice-Chair of the International Optical Networking Technical Committee of IEEE Communications Society. He is the Co-Chair for the Optical Networking Symposium of IEEE Globecom 2005. He is Guest Editor of the Dec 2005 special issue on “Optical Networks” of the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology. He also serves for a number of years as a member of the Technical Program Committees for the major conferences (e.g. OFC, ECOC, IEEE GlobeCom, IEEE ICC, etc.) in the area of telecommunications/networking (more than 20 conferences). Dr. Tomkos is the IEEE ComSoc Representative in the IEEE Nanotechnology Council. He is the General Chair of the COST workshop on “Challenges in Optical Networking”, the General Co-Chair of the COST-ONNA workshop on “Design of Next Generation Optical Networks: from the physical up to the network level perspective” and an EU co-chair of the strategic NSF/IST/COST workshop on “The Future of Optical Networking”. He has also co-organized 2 international workhops on the topic of “Optical networking for Grid applications” that are held in conjuction with major international conferences. In addition he serves as a member of the IASTED Technical Committee on Telecommunications (2003-2006) and the IFIP working group on “Photonic Networking”. He is also an invited expert Evaluator for European research projects and a Reviewer for major scientific journals including the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, and the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.
Dr. Tomkos received the B.S. degree in physics from the University of Patras, Greece, the M.Sc. degree in telecommunications engineering and Ph.D. degree in optical telecommunications from the University of Athens, Greece. During his Ph.D. studies he was a visiting researcher in several leading research centers across Europe. (Full CV at AIT site)

Dr. Dimitrios Klonidis was awarded his PhD degree in the field of Optical communications and networking from the University of Essex, UK in 2006. He received his MSc degree in Telecommunication and Information Systems from the same university and his first degree of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1998.
He was the main researcher on the UK’s research council OPSnet project which finished in August 2004 demonstrating asynchronous switching technology of ultra fast optical packets. Afterwards, he worked on the development of the ultra-fast transmission and switching testbed for the UK’s research council UPC project, while he participated on a number of national and EU projects.
In September 2005, he joined the high-speed Networks and Optical Communications (NOC) group in AIT as a faculty member and senior researcher.
He is a member of the IEEE society and he serves as a reviewer on major IEEE and IEE journals in the area of optical communications. He has invited presentations in international conferences and workshops. In 2004 he received a grand and the best paper award from the IEEE-OECC conference comity. The same year he presented his final work on OPSnet project as a post-deadline paper in ECOC conference.
His main research interests are in the area of ultra-fast photonic networks, including optical transmission and modulation, fast switching, high speed optical processing and fast node control. The considered networking applications include high capacity SONET/SDH, Optical Packet/Burst Switched and Grid Computing Networks. (Full CV at AIT site)

Mr. Christos Kouloumentas received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 2000 and his M.Sc. degree in Optoelectronics-Microelectronics from the Physics Department of University of Crete in 2004. In January 2001, he visited the international research center Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), in Hamburg Germany as a guest scientist, and worked on the design of the RF-system for the linear particle accelerator, being currently developed. In August 2001 he joined the Optical Communications Group of the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH), as a research scientist, working within the frames of the ODUPE European Project (Optical Devices Using Photosensitivity for their Elaboration) on topics related to photosensitivity. He joined the “High speed Networks and Optical Communications” Group of Athens Information Technology Center as a research scientist in September 2005. His current research efforts focus on ultra-high speed, all-optical signal processing, exploiting fiber-based processing schemes.

Ms. Maria Spyropoulou received the degree in Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences from the National Technical University of Athens (N.T.U.A.) in 2004 and the Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Communication Systems and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol (UK) in 2005. In the framework of the collaboration between N.T.U.A. and the National Centre of Scientific Research “Demokritos” she performed her practice work at the Institute of Nuclear Technology and Radiation Protection. The aforementioned work, was part of a project which involved spectroscopic studies for the qualitative and quantitative determination of aluminum in the serum of patients undergoing long periods of haemodialysis. She has worked for six months at the Laboratoire de Spectrochimie Infrarouge et Raman de Lille situated on the campus of the University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, in northern France. The subject of her work there involved the preparation of CdS nanoparticles in TiO2 matrix by use of the Sol-Gel technique and optical characterization of planar TiO2 waveguides. The results of this work have bee n presented at the European Congress on Molecular Spectroscopy (EUCMOS), which took place in Krakow (Poland) in September 2004. Since February 2006 she has joined the “High Speed Networks and Optical Communications” group of the Athens Information Technology (A.I.T.), “Centre of Excellence for Research and Graduate Education”, as a researcher. Her research interests lie in the field of all-optical amplification, multi-wavelength regeneration based on active media and in particular, quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD-SOAs).

Mr. Ioannis Papagiannakis was born in Chania, Greece, in 1981. He received the Electrical Engineering Diploma degree in 2004 from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Technology, University of Patras, Greece. He graduated ranked 1st among July 2004 class of the same department and also received a grant from National Foundation of Scholarships (NFS) for the academic year 2000-2001. He received his M.Sc. degree in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in 2006. Since February 2006, he has joined AIT as a research scientist in the High Speed Networks and Optical Communications group. His research interests cover the field of optical networks, including mitigation of optical transmissions impairments by electronic means such as forward error correction (FEC) and electronic channel equalization (ECE).

Part-time collaborators include:

Mr. Ioannis Karamitsos, is currently a Project Manager for Hellascom (Data Leased Lines Network) Project in the Access &Transmission Dept. of Intracom, Greece. He joined Intracom in end of 1993. His received a B.Eng in Electronics Engineering from the University of Rome “LA SAPIENZA”, and an MBA degree from the Frederick Taylor University, California, USA, and an M.S. degree in Telematics Management from the University of Krems, Austria. He is currently working toward the Ph.D degree in University of The Aegean, Samos, Greece. His research interests include Optical Burst Switching, Optical Wavelength Switching and traffic engineering for IP over WDM networks. He is also an IEEE member and a SPIE member. Mr. Karamitros is an associate member of the NOC of “Athens Information Technology – Center of Excellence for Research and Graduate Education”.

Mr. Yannis Tsirilakis obtained his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Patras in 2003. In December 2004 he also received the Master of Science in Information Networking offered from Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with Athens Information Technology (AIT). Since March of 2005, he is working as a software engineer in Intracom Defense Electronics on the implementation of a wireless broadband network (Wi-Max Access System P-MP). In January 2006, he also joined the “High Speed Networks and Optical Communications Group” (NOC) of AIT as a part-time researcher. His main focus has been placed upon decision support systems and business models for deployment of broadband networks and services. In parallel, he has participated in the EU funded project “FP6 IST SSA BReATH” (Broadband e-Services and Access for The Home). Yannis is a holder of the “Award of Excellence in Telecommunications” awarded from Ericsson Hellas for his work on a handover algorithm for GSM/UMTS networks. He is also the co-developer of “SensaSim”, a Java-based simulator for wireless multi-hop networks using directional antennas (http://www.ait.edu.gr/research/wireless_and_sensors/sensasim.asp).

Past members of the group:

Dr. Carmen Mas Machuca holds an assistant professor position at AIT, Athens, Greece since January 2004. Dr. Mas received her telecommunication engineering degree from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) in 2000. In 1996, she became research assistant at the Institute of Computer Communications and Applications, EPFL, where she was a Teaching Assistant in several courses and coordinated the participation in the COBNET European project implementing the management platform of an optical access network. In January 2000, she joined Intracom, Greece as project coordinator, where she participated and locally managed several IST and Eurescom projects (P1012, P1116) dealing with Passive Optical Networks, Automatic Switched Optical Networks (ASONs) and IP/OTN convergence. In October 2002, she joined AIT, Greece, as a Senior Research Scientist. She is an author and co-author of over 25 publications related to optical communications. She has reviewed papers of IEEE Transactions on Networking, JSAC, Globecom, ICC, etc. She is member of IEEE and OSA. Her research interests are related to optical network security, constrained based routing, protection and restoration, routing and signaling.

Dr. Ioannis Zacharopoulos (IEEE-ComSoc & LEOS member) received B.Sc.-Physics in 1994, M.Sc. in Telecoms in 1996 and Ph.D. in Optical Networks in 2000. Since March 2003 he is working as Assistant Professor in Athens Information Technology (AIT) in High Speed Networks & Optical Communications dpt. His work is related with applied R&D in optical networking. Before joining AIT he was with Vodafone Greece in the Technology Strategic Planning-R&D Department working as R&D Engineer focusing on advanced services tailoring to the mobile customer, such as location based services, content delivery, mpayment etc. His interests are in areas of Optical, Mobile, Access (Wireless, x-DSL, FTT-x) networks. He is author of more than 30 published works (mainly IEEE). He has extensive industrial and academic experience and additionally he is acting as reviewer to IEEE journals and conferences.

Dr. Christos Kolias received his Ph.D., Engineer’s and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA, in 1998, 1995 and 1993 respectively. He has a B.Sc. degree (Magna Cum Laude) in Mathematics from the University of Athens (1989). He is currently a Research Scientist at the Athens Information Technology (AIT). Dr. Kolias has been a Visiting Faculty of the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and the Computer Science Department at UCLA and was an Adjunct Professor of the Electrical Engineering Department at USC. From 1998 to 2002, Dr. Kolias was with Caspian Networks, of which he is a founding member and initially served as the company’s system architect and later as a Sr. Research Scientist. Caspian Networks is a Silicon Valley company designing and building next generation internet core terabit routers. Dr. Kolias’ areas of interest include: high-speed switching and routing, switch architectures, interconnection networks, optical networks, flow control and QoS, traffic engineering, protocol design, internet traffic analysis and characterization, storage networking, queueing theory and applications, system performance evaluation, network simulation. Dr. Kolias was a Fulbright Scholar and is the recipient of the Lilian Voudouri Fellowship and the Empeirikeio Foundation Scholarship.


Dr. Stelios Sygletos received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2000 with specialization in Telecommunications. Afterwards, he started working towards his PhD degree until 2005. During this period he was involved in several European projects DAVID, OLYMPIC, EPHOTON, and NOBEL as a research fellow. His work in these projects was related with various physical layer modeling issues of WDM optical network. He is an author of several articles published in international scientific journals and conferences. He is a member of the IEEE society and he serves as a reviewer on major IEEE journals in the area of optical communication. In February 2006 he joined the high-speed Networks and Optical Communications (NOC) group in AIT as a faculty member and researcher. His research interests include analytical modeling of transmission effects, all-optical 2R/3R regeneration and burst and packet-switched networks.

Ms Despina Parcharidou joined the "Athens Information Technology Center of Excellence in Research and Graduate Education" as a part time member of the research staff, in February 2003. She has received a BSc degree in Electronic Engineering from the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki in Greece. Currently she is also studying towards an MSc degree in the field of 'Telecommunications Systems and Networks' in the Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications at University of Athens. Her research interests include optical communications, optical transmission and switching effects.

Mr. Afxendios Tychopoulos , has recently (2003) joined the VLSI group in the Access & Transmission Dept. of Intracom SA (Greece), focusing on the development of high-speed networking infrastructure. He has working experience in the design of ICs and system-level design for telecommunications with Atmel (1999) and Intel (1999-2002), optical communications being his primary field of expertise. He is a graduate Electrical Engineer from the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras (Greece) and presently works towards the Ph.D. degree. His research interests encompass optical networking (SDH/SONET) with emphasis on error-control (FEC, Channel Compensation, etc). He is the author of a detailed treatment of SDH inband-coding in the ETT European journal (2004:15).

Over the years, a number of AIT students have performed research under the supervision of group’s members. These are:
D. Vogiatzis (Now a Ph.D. student and researcher at AIT)
O. Gurel (Now a Ph.D. student in Turkey)
D. Owens (Now a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, USA)
P. Kalkarni (Now an Engineer working in the UK)

Several other students are currently working under the supervision of the group (S. Azodolmolky I. Papagianakis, G. Markidis, I. Tsirilakis, A. Challita, V. Bakolas, A. Barlas, I. Zaffar and others)


 

(last updated Oct. 2005)