- Greece
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH)
Profile
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki is the largest university in Greece, with 11 faculties and 41 departments. Its mission is focused on offering high-quality education to its students and producing actionable and applied research outcomes. The Department of Informatics is consistently ranked among the best in Greece, with highly cited papers and active faculty members who strive to bridge innovative technologies with established learning methodologies.
Projects
AUTH has successfully carried out various projects related to skills analytics. Labour market analytics and the creation of online courses. Most notable efforts include the ComproFITS project which produces valuable insights on Competence Management, the SKILLAB project for the continuous monitoring of the European Labour Market and the Blockademic project for courses and certifications on lifelong education. Other projects include Gradana and Comalat, targeted towards vocational training and Data Science graduates.
Expertise
AUTH, and most specifically the Department of Informatics, in the context of DIRECT, is highly skilled in software engineering, data science, machine learning methodologies and the extraction and natural language processing of textual information from various sources.
Key Tasks
AUTH is the coordinator of DIRECT, given its extended expertise in managing and delivering European research projects. AUTH is also the leader of WP3 which will produce a skills analytics engine for learning pathways recommendation.
Team
Ioannis Stamelos
Proposal Coordinator / Project Manager
Dr Ioannis Stamelos is Professor and Head of the School of Informatics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and serves as Proposal Coordinator and Project Manager for DIRECT. Having acted as scientific coordinator or PI on 30+ ICT R&D projects, he supplies the consortium with proven leadership and deep expertise in software engineering, effort estimation, competency building and applied AI, guiding DIRECT toward responsible digital innovation.
Lefteris Angelis
Team Leader
Dr Lefteris Angelis is Professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and leads the AUTH team in DIRECT. A specialist in the human dimension of software engineering, he applies advanced statistical methods to analyse competencies, skills and learning pathways. Angelis provides the consortium with data-driven insight on human factors, guiding evidence-based curriculum design and impact evaluation in digital-responsibility education.
Nikolaos Mittas
Researcher
Dr Nikolaos Mittas is Associate Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and senior researcher within DIRECT. His work applies statistics and data-mining to software engineering, project governance and competence management. Drawing on extensive expertise in software estimation and analytics, he will design the project’s metrics framework and support evidence-based development of learning assets.
Konstantinos Georgiou
Researcher
Konstantinos Georgiou is a PhD candidate at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a researcher in DIRECT. With a background in data and statistical analysis, software engineering, social-network analytics, NLP and machine learning, he focuses on digital-skills mapping, reskilling pathways and labour-market analytics, feeding data-driven insights into the project’s competence framework and pilot evaluation.
Konstantinos Charmanas
Researcher
Konstantinos Charmanas is a PhD student at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and researcher within DIRECT. His background spans data and statistical analysis, software engineering, social-network analytics and text mining. Specialising in information security, NLP and machine learning, he contributes threat-aware content curation, automated text pipelines and AI assessment tools that reinforce the project’s digital responsibility goals.
Takis Kavargyris
Researcher
Takis Kavargyris is a PhD student at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and researcher on DIRECT. With a background in data and statistical analysis, software engineering, social-network analytics, NLP and machine learning, he specialises in digital-skills intelligence, reskilling pathways and labour-market analytics. Kavargyris will design dashboards that track emerging skill gaps and support evidence-based pilot design and evaluation.
