Team:Greece United/Team

NOUS

aka Greece United

“NOUS” is an ancient Greek word (νοῦς) translated as “brain”. A general definition describes “NOUS” as a set of cognitive abilities, such as, consciousness, perception, thought and memory.

On the other hand, “NOUS” in French, literally means “we”. We seek to act as a unity through communication, which is our keystone. So, the word “NOUS” apart from characterizing the strength of each one of us separately, also describes the spirit of the team as a whole.

13th of October 2019: The official birthday of NOUS. Right around there four of us from different cities and universities, gathered together and decided to create an iGEM team with no geographical limitations, in contrast to the norm for Greek iGEM teams, and not for the upcoming competition, but for the next year. The idea for an iGEM team had been developing in each person’s mind separately, and then came a small push from our favorite PI, who brought us all together to connect our visions.

Less than a year later, the rest of the members were recruited, and the fun (but also the work) begun! Now we are 12 members, from 5 different universities and 4 different cities!

Let’s meet the team!






Team

Members


Jordi Kontis

ORIGINS: Athens & the place Christopher Columbus departed from
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Molecular biology and Genetics, DUTH
LOVES: Literally anything that has to do with the sea
FIELD: Fundraising, Wet Lab
TITLE: Team leader & Head of Entrepreneurship

aka Jordi

CLASSIFIED AS: The one who tries to keep everything in place
MISSION: Make everyone love whiskey
MOTO: Think logically
KARAOKE GO-TO: Sober - TOOL
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Became Head of Entrepreneurship
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Managing to take up a totally different sector he never worked before
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Nefeli Zikou

ORIGINS: Alexandroupoli, Greece
AGE: 20
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Physics, AUTH
LOVES: octopuses, everything that is blue, stars and DIY projects
FIELD: Dry Lab, Web Development, Human Practices
TITLE: Team Leader & Head of Dry Lab

aka Nefos

CLASSIFIED AS: the one who thinks that Gin smells like love and flowers
HATES: slow-talkers
MOTO: Shut up and swim
KARAOKE GO-TO: Kati san psema, Xasma
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Used Mike to understand what Dani said to cooperate with Christos to model these biology thingys.
LEFT HER MARK BY: Eating only and always garlic ham.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Daniel Kotsi

ORIGINS: Malia (not Matala), Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Molecular Biology and Genetics, DUTH
LOVES: any sport that'll bring out his competitive self
FIELD: Wet Lab, Human Practices
TITLE: Head of Wet Lab

aka Dani

CLASSIFIED AS: The one that would not hesitate to cut his hair off.
MOTO: Go bald or go home! (Currently at home)
KARAOKE GO-TO: Zitti e buoni, Maneskin
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Managed to handle the wet lab crisis. And he had a mental breakdown like only twice (per day)!
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Constantly upsetting Dry Lab.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Melina Zikou

ORIGINS: Alexandroupoli, Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Computer Science, AUTH
LOVES: tomatoes, nature, bikes and hiking
FIELD: Dry Lab, Web Development, Human Practices
TITLE: Head of Web Development

aka Laluña

CLASSIFIED AS: the bonkers one who will find a way to sneak AI in our project
UNOFFICIAL WORLD RECORD HOLDER: most bruises with unknown cause
MOTO: It is what it is
KARAOKE GO-TO: What’s up, Four None Blondes
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Put Html in its place! (with just 7,718 lines of code)
LEFT HER MARK BY: Letting the whole city know when she successfully compiled.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


John Thimianidis

ORIGINS: Alexandroupoli, Greece
AGE: 20
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Molecular Biology and Genetics, DUTH
LOVES: Any way you can associate with music, gardening (yes, he is 40 deep down)
FIELD: Wet Lab, Human Practices
TITLE: Head of Human Practices

aka GIAAAAAAAIINNN

CLASSIFIED AS: The fun, the serious, the philosopher (or not)
MOTO: You only need to find yourself. Everything else can be Googled.
KARAOKE GO-TO: Crazy train, Ozzy Osbourne
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Playing that elevator music in (almost) every group call but composed the one needed for the video.
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Never letting a call go by without screen sharing.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Pavlos Chatzoudis

ORIGINS: Alexandroupoli, Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Animation & Interactive media, Akto Thessaloniki
HOBBIES: Sketching, animating, dancing and sleeping
FIELD: Graphics Design, Social media
TITLE: Head of Graphics Design

aka Chatz

CLASSIFIED AS: silent, but not shy, miracle worker
MOTO: Happy thoughts through hard times.
DANCE SONG GO-TO: Smooth Criminal, Michael Jackson
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Everything pretty you can see about our team.
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Fracturing his hand before the Wiki Freeze week...
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Christos Mantis

ORIGINS: Athens, Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Molecular biology and Genetics, DUTH
HOBBIES: Hardware, hardware and occasionally some software
FIELD: Wet Lab, Dry Lab

aka (Praying) Mantis

CLASSIFIED AS: Bridge between Wet and Dry lab
HATES: Losing
THOUGHT HE WAS BEING RECRUITED FOR: Wet Lab?... yeah right
MOTO: Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday
KARAOKE GO-TO: The Worst (instrumental)
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Fought with CellDesigner and won (with a few gray hairs as collateral but who cares)
LEFT HIS MARK BY:Always canceling on our group activities the last moment.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Michalis Sarris

ORIGINS: Athens, Greece
AGE: 20
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Medicine, UOA
HOBBIES: His girl, his mom, his god complex and telling people they're wrong
FIELD: Wet Lab, Human Practices

aka Mike

CLASSIFIED AS: Chandler Bing’s and Gregory House’s sarcastic love child
HATES: People who won’t accept the truth
MOTO: All limitations are self-imposed.
KARAOKE GO-TO: Anything but he won’t know the exact lyrics
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Made 10 cells to do what he wants. One trillion to go!!
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Playing chess during meetings, during lab hours, even in his sleep.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Alkmini Zania

ORIGINS: Athens, Greece
AGE: 22
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Biology, UOA
HOBBIES: Crafts, algorithms, Dungeons&Dragons
FIELD: Wet Lab

aka Minion

CLASSIFIED AS: The one who constantly tried to sneak mushrooms in the project idea at any cost
THOUGHT SHE WAS BEING RECRUITED FOR: A campaign against space debris (also known as space junk, space pollution, space waste, space trash, or space garbage)
MOTO: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
KARAOKE GO-TO: Baby one more time, Britney Spears
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Managed to remain as calm as Buddha in the face of disaster. Sometimes calmed Dani too.
LEFT HER MARK BY: Mentioning D&D at least 3 times a day.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Nikolas Romanidis

ORIGINS: Alexandroupoli, Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Economics, UM
HOBBIES: Boxing, finance, cryptocurrency
FIELD: Fundraising, Public Relations

aka Nikolas

(dare you call him anything else...)


CLASSIFIED AS: The new guy
MOTO: Veni, vidi, vici
KARAOKE GO-TO: Uparxo, Kazatzidis
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Has seen all the mafia movies available.
Hoped to use them to make "an offer that he can't refuse".
LEFT HIS MARK BY: Transitioning extremely quickly from fun to serious when he had to talk to someone important.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Evangelia Maleskou

ORIGINS: Athens, Greece
AGE: 22
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, UTH
HOBBIES: Feeding the spiders in her room
FIELD: Dry Lab

aka Eva

CLASSIFIED AS: -
THOUGHT SHE WAS BEING RECRUITED FOR: an attempt to hack the iGEM organization using HTML
MOTO: Whatever you do give 100%. Unless you donate blood
KARAOKE GO-TO: Under pressure, Queen
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Managed to never answer about team presentation.
LEFT HER MARK BY: Never answering about team presentation.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN


Anastasia Tzima

ORIGINS: Thessaloniki, Greece
AGE: 21
ULTIMATE ABILITY: Economics, AUTH
LOVES: Business strategy, entrepreneurship, tennis, piano
FIELD: Fundraising

aka Annie

CLASSIFIED AS: cool kid with the briefcase
THOUGHT SHE WAS BEING RECRUITED FOR: a position in W.H.O.
MOTO: You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
KARAOKE GO-TO: Gucci forema, Mazonakis
COMPLETED MISSIONS: Once finished a call to a possible sponsor without being doubtful of what they said.
LEFT HER MARK BY: Establishing the "very very kind reminders" - to sponsors and everyone else.
EXTENT OF POWER: UNKNOWN






Of course, nothing would be possible without the help of our beloved PIs, advisors, instructors, and outside partner, and mentor! Their dedication and hardwork really shaped our journey.

Let’s meet them!





Principal

Investigators


Eleni Kaldoudi

POSITION: Principal Investigator
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: Quadruple checking anything we do. Probably the only reason people don’t laugh at us today.
Always there in deadlines, payments, and parties.

Eleni Kaldoudi


Eleni Kaldoudi is a Professor in Medical Physics and Medical Informatics in the School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH). Her research interests are within health informatics, and physics of medical and biomedical diagnostic techniques, areas in which she has published 2 books, 6 book chapters and over 90 full papers in various journals and conference proceedings. Eleni is also teaching the course of Physics in Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, DUTH and the course of Medical Physics in the School of Medicine DUTH. Eleni has participated as a project leader or team member in more than 20 national and EU grants and coordinated CARRE FP7-ICT project, has acted a co-chair of the Committee for Women in Biomedical Engineering, International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (2015-2018), and is an elected Member of the Council and President Elect of the European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering and Science.

Email: kaldoudi@med.duth.gr
Homepage: http://iris.med.duth.gr/kaldoudi/en/


Nikolaos Glykos

POSITION: Principal Investigator
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: As his name says he is sweet*. He sweetly kills your dreams that you thought you had a sufficient model. We love him still.
*(Glykos means sweet in Greek)

Nikolaos Glykos


Nicholas Glykos obtained his first degree on Biology at the University of Athens, studying for his final year thesis with Prof. Hamodrakas on a new multiple sequence alignment algorithm. Being charmed by this computational work, he naturally decided to abandon Biology for Physics and computational Biology and obtained a PhD on biological crystallography at the (then) Astbury Department of Biophysics (UK) with Prof. Simon Phillips. Coming back to Greece, and following a year-long tour of duty, he spent six lovely years as a postdoc with Prof. Mike Kokkinidis at Crete writing code, avoiding the wet lab, and occasionally solving a structure. In 2003 —and after a short visit to beautiful Ioannina— he decided to take-up Einstein's advice and got a (mostly) teaching job at the Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics at Alexandroupolis, where he still serves as an Associate Professor. He has authored ~45 research articles in journals of the Science Citation Index, with most of them revolving around structural biology, crystallography and computational biology.

Email: glykos@mbg.duth.gr
Homepage: https://utopia.duth.gr/glykos/


Dr Margy Koffa

POSITION: Principal Investigator
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: Saved the project! What would we be without her scientific opinion and her lab?

Dr Margy Koffa


Dr Margy Koffa is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics Democritus University of Thrace, Director of the MSc Program “Translational Research in Biomedicine”, and head of the BioImaging Unit. Prof. Koffa holds a Diploma in Biology (University of Athens, 1992) and a Ph.D. from the Medical School University of Crete, in collaboration with the National Hellenic Research Foundation (1997). She held postdoctoral researcher appointments at the University of Birmingham, Institute for Cancer Research (Prof. J. Kerr), University of Glasgow (Prof. B. Clements) and at the EMBL, Heidelberg (Prof. I. Mattaj). She has served as an expert evaluator for EC projects and for the General Secretariat for Research and Technology. Her research team in DMBG is interested in the regulation of cell division, aneuploidy and cancer, as well as mitotic cell response to different compounds, including inhibitors and drug-nanocarriers, and combines molecular biology techniques with optical approaches and imaging analysis. She is the author of more than 44 publications. She has been awarded personal fellowships EMBO, Marie Curie and Marie Curie re-integration Grant. Her research is supported by European and National competitive grants including ERA.Net RUS-Pilot Joint Call for Innovation Projects, AICR-UK (Association for International Cancer Research), European Territorial Cooperation Programme Greece-Boulgaria 2007-2013, FNR- Luxembourg (Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg) 2014-2017, Fondation Cancer 2018-2022, Entrepreneurship Competitiveness and Innovation (EPANEK) - NSRF 2014-2020.


Email: mkoffa@mbg.duth.gr





Dr. Georgios I. Drosos

POSITION: Secondary Investigator
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: His deep knowledge of the problem we are tackling is the reason we were able to even start our project.

Dr. Georgios I. Drosos


Dr. Georgios I. Drosos is an Orthopaedic Surgeon and a Chairman at the University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a Professor of Orthopaedics in the School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH). He has graduated from Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). He obtained a PhD from University of Crete, and trained in Athens (Naval Hospital of Athens, Greece) and U.K. (Royal United Hospital, Bath). He was a Medical Officer in Greek Navy until 2006. Since then, he has been a Member of Faculty, Medical School, DUTH. His special clinical and research interests lie among: Hip and Knee replacement (Fast-track / ERAS: Enhanced Recovery after Surgery, Short Stem Total Hip Arthroplasty, SuperPATH Minimal Invasive Surgery) Musculoskeletal infections (Osteomyelitis in Diabetic foot, Periprosthetic Joint Infection, Local antibiotic application), Orthopaedic trauma, Osteoporosis – Fragility fractures, Osteoarthritis. Georgios has 89 publications in International Journals.

Email: drosos@med.duth.gr




Advisor &

Instructor


George Drosatos

POSITION: Advisor | Dry Lab
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: The man who came to save the day.

George Drosatos

George Drosatos is an Assistant Researcher at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing, Athena Research Center in Xanthi (Greece). He received his diploma thesis in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi (Greece) in 2006. In addition, he acquired a Master’s degree (March 2010) and a PhD degree (December 2013) both from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Democritus University of Thrace. Furthermore, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2013-14) at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing, Athena Research Center in Xanthi (Greece). In 2015-16, he was Associate Researcher and Project Manager of CARRE Project at School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace in Alexandroupoli. In 2017-18, he was Research Software Engineer in EROGamb Project in the Department of Computing and Informatics, Bournemouth University, UK. In total, he has participated as a researcher in 8 research projects. Dr. Drosatos has interdisciplinary background, and his research interests focus mainly on privacy-enhancing technologies, information security, and eHealth. Last but not least, during the past 5 years (2016-21), he has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), the International Hellenic University (IHU) and the Neapolis University Pafos (NUP).

Email: gdrosato@athenarc.gr
Homepage: https://www.drosatos.info


Christos Efstathiou

POSITION: Instructor | Wet Lab
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: Always there for an opinion of an experienced one when we needed him.

Christos Efstathiou

Christos is currently a PhD candidate and a Research Associate Fellow in the Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Alexandroupolis, Laboratory of Cellular Biology and Cell Cycle. He has bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology & Genetics. His scientific interests are summed up in Cellular Biology, Cell cycle and Mitotic spindle formation, Cancer research, Biomarker Discovery and Discovery of new innovative drugs. For that he managed to gain a lot of research experience from the many projects which he has undertaken as a Research Associate Fellow. He is also a holder of the Teaching and Training Competence. His mother tongue is Greek while he is also a fluent English Speaker.

Email: cefstath@mbg.duth.gr




Outside

Partner


Yiannis Papageorgiou

POSITION: Outside partner | Fundraising & Entrepreneurship
COMMENT FROM THE TEAM: His unforgettable phrase “Λουξ φάση δικέ μου” might live in our minds forever.

Yiannis Papageorgiou

Yiannis Papageorgiou is senior student in the department of material science at university of Patras and has been accepted for master studies, after his graduation, at the department of finance and management engineering, Aegean university. Yiannis has work experience as corporate representative in business forums and his responsibilities were lead generation, sales and pitching to potential customers. He was co-founder and sales manager at an incubated startup project that was aiming to engage sports fans with their favorite sport team. During his early years as an undergrad student, he has attended multiple programs & seminars about entrepreneurship and product development. He is also certified growth marketer by Hellenic-American union and growthrocks. In his free time, he likes playing music, reading and mountain hiking.




Mentor


Naina Goel

POSITION: Mentor

Naina Goel

Naina Goel is a dual PhD Scholar at KU Leuven University, Campus Kortrijk and University of Ghent.
My research interests includes host-microbiota interactions, molecular biology, computational biology.
I am also coach for STEAM+ challenge, Decolonize Nature in collaboration with African Museum, Brussels.
I am representative of Idea Lab project that focuses on Open Science: A new paradigm for science, research and community in the 21st Century.
I am cofounder of an initiative that focuses on Learning for Sustainability, L4S, promotes quality education around the globe.
I am Young Zoologist member of Royal Belgium Zoological Society.
I am also focusing on empowering under developed and developing societies by introducing the concept of social entrepreneurship.