Kostas Karpouzis

About

I 'm currently a Research Director at the Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems Lab of the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, National Technical University of Athens; I'm also the Head of Game Programming for SAE Athens, a validated college of the Middlesex University. In my research, I'm looking for ways to make computer systems more aware of and responsive to the way people interact with each other using natural, affective interaction and intelligent, user-adaptive algorithms. I'm also investigating how gamification and digital games can be used in classroom and informal settings to assist conventional teaching and help teach social issues and STEAM subjects to children and adults.

Since 1998, I have participated in more than twenty research projects funded by Greek and European bodies; most notably the Humaine Network of Excellence, within which I completed my post-doc in the field of mapping signals to signs of emotion, leading research efforts in emotion modelling and recognition, the FP6 IP CALLAS project, where I served as Area Leader of Affective applications, the FP7 TeL Siren project (Technical Manager), which was voted Best Learning Game in Europe for 2013 by the Games and Learning Alliance Network of Excellence, and the H2020 iRead project, which produced Navigo, the winner of the GALA Serious Games competition for 2018. Siren is also at #4 in the ‘Great Examples’ section of the ‘Games for Impact’ list of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

In the past, I 've worked as an Adjunct Lecturer for NTUA (2007), the Univ. of Piraeus (2004-10, 16-18) and the Univ. of West Macedonia (18-19), teaching subjects related to Computer Graphics, Game Development, Virtual Reality, HCI, Assistive Computing, ICT in education, Image Processing, Data Mining, Robotics and e-health services. I'm currently a Lecturer on Digital methods and Strategic communication at the M.A. programme in Sustainable Tourism & Communication Technologies, European Communication Institute.

I am the Student Activities Chair and Computer Chapter Chair for IEEE Greece, member of the BoD for the gi-Cluster of Corallia, which consists of industrial and academic members of the game and creative ecosystem in Greece, and Chairman of the Board of the Hellenic Association of Computer Engineers. I’m a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (Springer), Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Springer) Journal on Synthetic Emotions (IGI), and Frontiers in ICT and Frontiers in Digital Humanities (Frontiers In). Google Scholar reports 4160+ citations to my work, h-index=34 and i10-index=78 (May 2020) and Impactio ranks me in the top 0.01% in Artificial Intelligence and top 3.63% in Machine Learning.

Besides this, I'm involved in a number of science communication activities, most notably Famelab Greece, openscience.gr, and House of Makers, a grassroots initiative which aims to promote STEM and make-ing activities attractive to young students. I'm also an advocate for technology and CS in schools, participating in the Girls Go Coding initiative to attract girls and female adults to coding. In November 2014, I co-founded a start-up called LeXIS which develops personalised word games for children and adults with dyslexia and other learning disorders; LeXIS graduated from the accelerator programme run by the Greek Industry Association (SEV) and was showcased in several pitching events. In fall 2016, I authored a lesson on the TED-ed platform titled "Can machines read your emotions?"; the lesson surpassed 300.000 views in its first week and has been used by more than 240 teachers. I'm a 3x TEDx Speaker; you can find those plus other talks in this YouTube playlist.