I completed my BA in the neighbouring city of Piraeus, where I developed a strong interest in robotics, microcontrollers and electronics. During my internship I had the opportunity to work alongside experts in electronics and embedded systems, which further fueled my passion for the field. For my dissertation I developed a hardware-based GUI to control a 5-DOF robot arm — and it was there, seeing what a machine could do in place of a human limb, that the idea of artificial limbs and neuroprosthetics first sparked in me. I did not yet know how to pursue it, but the question stayed.

Shortly after, I briefly attended the Mathematics department at the University of Patras, taking a few courses out of personal interest — without completing the degree. It was there that I came across an interdisciplinary MA program in Electronics & Information Processing, which I decided to pursue. My master's focused on image and signal processing, data analysis, and embedded systems. A course in Biomedical Imaging introduced me to brain imaging and the neural correlates of brain function — and that was it, I was hooked. Whether it was curiosity, intuition, or perhaps a touch of ADHD that pulled me from robotics and BCI toward consciousness and brain development — I am not entirely sure. But I have no regrets.

This led me to a PhD in Neurosciences, focusing on machine learning applications in disorders of consciousness, defended in October 2019. In March 2020, I joined the Applied Machine Learning group at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7) at Research Centre Jülich as a Postdoctoral Researcher, where I spent six years working on medical imaging and data analysis. Among other things, I have been trying to understand the brain aging trajectory — partly out of scientific curiosity, partly out of a personal interest in keeping my own brain as young as possible (still working on that).

Personal Motto: "We alone regard the man who takes no part in politics not as someone who minds his own business but as useless" — Pericles