Fireside Chat Between Ioannis Rekanos & Vassileios Verykios on AI impact to society and economy

Date

May 20 2026

Time

3:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Location

Emilios Riadis Hall, Thessaloniki International Fair

Egnatias 154, TIF, Thessaloniki 546 36

This fireside chat between Ioannis Rekanos and Vassileios Verykios will explore the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence on society and the economy. Through an open and focused discussion, the two speakers will address the opportunities, challenges, and broader implications of AI for work, productivity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and public policy.

Particular emphasis will be placed on how AI is reshaping economic models, workforce skills, and the relationship between technology, society, and institutions. The discussion will also highlight key issues of ethics, trust, transparency, and responsible AI adoption, with a view to ensuring that Artificial Intelligence serves progress, sustainable growth, and the public good.

Who the
Speakers are:

Speakers

Vassilios S. Verykios Vice Rector of Student Welfare at the Hellenic Open University (HOU)

Vassilios S. Verykios

Vice Rector of Student Welfare at the Hellenic Open University (HOU)

Vassilios S. Verykios is Vice Rector of Student Welfare at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) and Professor of Data Management at its School of Science and Technology, ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally (Elsevier) and among leading Greek computer scientists (Research.com). He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Purdue University and a degree from the University of Patras, and has held academic positions at Drexel University and the University of Thessaly before joining HOU, where he now serves as Professor, postgraduate program director, and founder/director of the Big Data Analytics and Anonymization Lab. With extensive administrative and research experience, he has contributed to numerous international projects, published over 250 scientific papers with more than 13,000 citations, and actively participates in major conference committees (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, KDD) and editorial roles in high-impact journals. His research focuses on artificial intelligence, data science, data management, privacy and security, knowledge discovery, and software systems.
Ioannis Rekanos Vice Rector of Research and Innovation, Aristotle University

Ioannis Rekanos

Vice Rector of Research and Innovation, Aristotle University

Prof. Ioannis T. Rekanos was born in 1970 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He received the Diploma degree (M.Sc.) in Electrical Engineering in 1993 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1998, both from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Thessaloniki, Greece. His doctoral dissertation focused on inverse electromagnetic scattering problems.

From 2000 to 2002, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Radio Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University), Finland, where he held a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. Since 2006, he has been a member of the Faculty of Engineering at AUTH. He is currently Professor of Wave Propagation in the Department of Telecommunications, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, AUTH.

His research interests include electromagnetic and acoustic wave propagation, inverse scattering, computational electromagnetics, fractional calculus, digital signal processing, and biomedical applications. Prof. Rekanos is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Head of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He currently serves as Vice Rector for Research and Innovation at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.