Keynote Speakers

1. The economy and society in the age of artificial intelligence (Gabriel Xiao-Guang Yue, Kostas Gouliamos, Christos Tryfonopoulos)

Prof. Dr. Gabriel Xiao-Guang Yue is an internationally renowned scholar and global academic leader, recognized by Stanford University and Elsevier as one of the World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists continuously since 2022. His highly impactful research is deeply rooted in AI, Sustainability, and STEM education. He is the Co-Founder and Secretary-General of the International Engineering and Technology Institute (IETI), established in 2015, a prestigious organization whose network includes 10 Nobel Prize Laureates, 4 Turing Award Laureates, and 3 Fields Medal Laureates. His distinguished career is marked by elite academy elevations, having been elected a Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Engineering (PAE) since 2019 and a Member of the Academy of Engineering Sciences of Ukraine (AESU) since 2022. A pioneer in transnational academic cooperation, Professor Yue serves as the Vice-Rector for International Cooperation at Turon University in Uzbekistan (since 2026), a Guest Professor and Senior Professor at the German University of Digital Science (since 2025), an Adjunct Professor at Sohar University in Oman (since 2025), and an Adjunct Professor at European University Cyprus (since 2019). Beyond higher education, he has driven corporate and technological strategy as an International Advisor for CTI since 2012, managing initiatives across its global offices in Frankfurt, Vienna, Hong Kong, New York, and Bangalore. Dedicated to pushing the boundaries of technology and ecology, he also leads scholarly discourse as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies (IJESGT), published by IGI Global.

Professor Dr. Kostas Gouliamos, MEASA, is an internationally award-winning academic and author in the socio-cultural and literary domains.His work has garnered widespread acclaim for its intellectual depth, originality, and interdisciplinary reach. He is a winner of the 2024 «Chinese Government Friendship Award», the highest honour bestowed by the People’s Republic of China to foreign scholars, authors and experts.

He has taught and/or conducted research associated with prestigious universities in Canada and Europe. Since 2000 he has been living and working in Cyprus, where he was twice elected Rector (2014-2021) of the European University Cyprus.

Dr. Kostas Gouliamos was appointed (2017-2020) by the European University Association (EUA) as a Council Member for the “Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation” (RIS3) Expert Group.

He has also been granted the status of Honorary Professor by the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Shenzhen University in China.

In 2025, Professor Gouliamos unanimously elected a member of the Administrative Council of the Greek School of Fine Arts, an academic institution that coincides with the history of the Modern Greek State.

He was elected an Ordinary Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA). In 2025, he was elected as Cyprus’s National Representative for a second five-year term (2025–2030) within the intergovernmental structure of EASA. Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts are notable scientists and artists as well as 37 Nobel Prize laureates.

He was also elected Fellow of the historic Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London/UK. Founded in 1754, RCA`s eminent Fellows were and/or are Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Adam Smith, Marie Curie, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, Tim Berners-Lee and others.

He was elected Member of The Europeana Network Association (ENA), a strong community of experts in the field of digital cultural heritage.

Professor Gouliamos co-chairs (2024-2028) -along with Professor Shigeyuki Hamori (Yamato University/Japan)- the International Research Institute for Economics and Management (IRIEM).

He was a member (2005-2010) of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the European Social Survey-ESS, a transnational social research that received the “Descartes” Prize (2005) for its “excellence in scientific research”.

For a period of six years (2005–2011), he served as a member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation (ESF).

Professor Kostas Gouliamos has written a considerable number of books, chapters and poetry collections published by notable publishing houses worldwide (Springer, Routledge etc) and nationally (Gutenberg, Synchroni Epochi etc).

His work has been translated into several languages {French, Spanish, Slovak, Dutch, Chinese, English, Italian, Portuguese}. His books have been selected and contained within Libraries of many high-ranking universities globally (University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Harvard University etc.) as well as in plentiful National Libraries, including the Library of Congress/USA, Zentralbibliothek Zürich/Switzerland, Royal Danish Library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, The British Library-St. Pancras/UK etc.

Some of his books were honoured by the participation of leading thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Cornelius Castoriadis, Robert Babe, Gao Xiang and Henry Giroux.

For a four-year period (2009–2013), he represented Cyprus at the Council of Europe on the then Committee on Higher Education and Research. He served as a member of the Cyprus Scientific Research Council (2010–2014) and as Vice-President of the Cyprus State Archives Council (2012–2014).

Since 2023, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific “Journal for Future Society and Education” (JFSE), published by the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE), based in Austria.

His poetry collection “Neurasthenic Landscapes” was chosen for publication and audio-visual presentation by Manos Hadjidakis at the International Festival of Arts “Music August” (1981). Hadjidakis received the consent of world-famous composer Nicola Piovani to use his music in the presentation.

He and Mikis Theodorakis co-authored the book “In the Dialectic of Harmony” (2018, Gutenberg).

Kostas Gouliamos represented Cyprus as author throughout the annual EUNIC’s European Literature events (2018) in the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Leeuwarden).

Dr. Christos Tryfonopoulos is a Professor and Vice-Chair at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of the Peloponnese. In the past, he has served as Department Chair, Director of the MSc program “Space Science, Technologies and Applications” (jointly with the National Observatory of Athens), and Head of the P2P and Information Management research group at Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany. His research interests focus on the areas of AI applications, data/information management, and distributed grid/cloud/P2P systems. He has published 110+ research papers in top venues and has coordinated and participated in 20+ European and national R&D projects. He has served as a reviewer for top international scientific journals and conferences and as an evaluator of research proposals and projects for the European Commission and the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation. He has given invited talks in prestigious universities and research centers internationally and has received two national scholarships and three awards for his research work at international scientific conferences.

More information is available at https://users.uop.gr/~trifon/

2. The Greek economy and society facing challenges (Panagiotis Liargovas , Ismini Kriari, Nikos Fotopoulos)

Panagiotis Liargovas received his BA degree from the University of Athens and his MA and Ph.D degrees in Economics from Clark University, Worcester MA. For the period 2013-18 he was the Head of the Parliamentary Budget Office at the Hellenic Parliament. He is currently Chairman of the Board and Scientific Director of the Centre of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE) and of the National Productivity Board. He is also Professor at the Department of Management Science and Technology, University of Peloponnese. His research agenda is highly interdisciplinary, combining economics, international trade and finance, strategy, social issues and management and focuses mainly on two regions: European Union and Southeast Europe (including Greece). He has made more than 100 publications in academic journals and has published more than 20 books.

Ismini Kriari is currently President of the National Authority of Human Assisted Procreation. She is also member of the Bioethics Committee of the School of Medicine at the National University of Athens and member of the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church. She has served as member of the National Bioethics and Technoethics Committee and as Greece’s representative at the UNESCO Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee and at the Task Force on Bioethics at the Council of Europe

Ismini Kriari is emeritus Professor and former Rector (2016 – 2020) at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, where she has taught Constitutional Law and Bioethics and Law at pre-graduate and postgraduate level. She is author of five books and many articles on Constitutional law, constitutional history, bioethics and human rights (in Greek, English and German language). She has co-founded the European Center on Bioethics and Technoethics at Panteion University

She has participated in the scientific committees of many conferences in Greece and abroad and she has given many lectures on constitutiοnαl law, Greek political history and bioethics.”

Nikos Fotopoulos is Professor at the Department of Social and Education Policy of the University of the Peloponnese, Greece, with a specialization in Sociology of Education, Culture and Lifelong Learning.
He served as Director of the Centre for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (KEDIVIM) at the University of the Peloponnese from
2017 to 2022, and as Director of the Postgraduate Programme “Educational
Policy: Design, Development and Administration” from 2023 to 2025. Since 2023, he has been Director of the Postgraduate Programme “Education, Human Resources and Employment Policies.”
For many years, he has collaborated with the Labour Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (INE/GSEE) and the Centre for Educational Policy Development (KANEP/GSEE), where he has served as Scientific Director since 2021.
His academic work includes numerous articles, studies, and publications that have appeared in edited volumes and conference proceedings in Greece and abroad.