TEDxUniversityofCrete

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Anna Touloumakou

  Anna K. Touloumakou, DPhil, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. Her research focuses on teaching and learning approaches rooted in trauma-informed practice, inclusion, and equity. In the field of teacher education, she examines and deconstructs common misconceptions -such as the widely perpetuated myth of learning styles- while also exploring the pedagogical potential of outdoor learning. Her current work is dedicated to mapping and promoting evidence-based, data-driven approaches to trauma-informed education. She is the founder of "The Safe Space Project."

• DISMISS (Performance)

  DISMISS are a Rock & Roll band hailing from Athens, Greece. Formed in 2021, the five-piece group (Jo, Sellyoursouls, Monica, Andy and Peepeace) blends the nostalgia of classic rock with punk outbursts and modern influences, striking a perfect balance between '00s alternative and the raw power of '70s rock. This "recipe" has established them as one of the most high-energy live acts on the scene today, fueling their steady upward trajectory. With their debut album on the horizon, the band is ready to kick things into high gear and go full throttle in 2026.

• Eleni Dimitropoulou (Performance)

  Eleni is a storyteller and theatre educator, with a deep, almost visceral relationship with storytelling that began in her early childhood. This love evolved through her theater studies at the "Delos" Drama School, as well as through her involvement with playback theatre - a form of improvisational and physical theater - under the guidance of director N. Karageorgos. She has directed performances for both children and adults, actively participating in festivals for young creators with an emphasis on experimentation, as well as in street performances with a social character. Along this path, the fairy tale naturally found its place in her life. Today, she works professionally in storytelling, participating in festivals, museums, theaters, and other artistic venues. Her primary goal is to showcase the richness and timeless value hidden within these stories.

• Eva Nathena

  Eva Nathena is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, where she studied painting under Chronis Botsoglou and set design under Giannis Ziakas. Since her student years, she served as an assistant to the renowned Dionysis Fotopoulos, gaining invaluable experience in theatre and cinema. Throughout her career, she has designed sets and costumes for over 150 theatrical productions, ranging from classical and contemporary repertoire to ancient Greek drama, with numerous performances at Epidaurus and other major venues. A standout moment in her international career was her collaboration with Costa-Gavras at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 2022, she directed the short film Antigone, followed by her 2023 feature film Murderess (Fonissa). The film garnered six awards at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and was selected as Greece’s official entry for the Academy Awards (Oscars).

• Iñaki Lamua

  Born and raised in Barcelona, Iñaki initially studied Journalism. However, it was after moving to Madrid and working in marketing that everything truly took off. This was where he first mastered TikTok and began uploading his very first videos in Greek. His connection to Greece, however, dates back much further to 2014, when he participated in a children's film festival in Pyrgos. That experience inspired him to start teaching himself Greek. A decade later, in 2024, he made the big move and settled permanently in Greece to dedicate himself fully to social media content creation.

• Ioannis Liodakis

  Ioannis Liodakis is a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics – FORTH, where he studies the Universe in its most extreme forms. His research focuses on supermassive black holes and the violent jets ejected from the centers of distant galaxies-phenomena that test the very limits of physics. After completing his PhD at the University of Crete, he held positions at some of the world’s leading universities and research institutions, including Stanford University and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. He returned to Crete to establish his own research group, supported by a prestigious ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. His work on supermassive black holes has been recognized with numerous national and international accolades, including the Gruber Fellowship from the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

• Maria Mavrogianni (Performance)

  Maria Mavrogianni is a dancer, dance teacher, and chemist based in France. She combines contemporary dance with freestyle hip-hop. Her journey began with classical ballet and contemporary dance, training for 10 years at the Claire Dance School in Heraklion. At the age of 17, she moved to Thessaloniki where she started freestyle hip-hop and attended the "REDANCE" program by Konstantinos Gerardos. She subsequently moved to France to study dance at La Manufacture. Since then, she has participated in battles, performances, filmings, and commercials, while also creating her solo piece "Matter of Choice," which was presented at the Patras Art Festival and the "Summer in Athens" festival organized by OPANDA.

• Matthew Cochrane

  Matt is the COO of Fairlo, a leading Fintech, steering the company’s transition from a disruptive startup into a profitable, B-Corp certified international lender. He is now navigating the complex journey of transforming that success into a fully regulated bank. With a career built at the crossroads of banking and technology, he specialises in building nimble, structured processes, leading teams through "uncharted waters". Beyond the boardroom, he is a dedicated endurance athlete, having completed multiple Ironman triathlons, marathons, mountain summits, as well as a relay swim across the English Channel. It was in the 13-degree waters of the Channel that he solidified his leadership philosophy: the finish line is an illusion, and the true prize is the character forged during the struggle. A firm believer that curiosity beats expertise and action beats reaction, Matt’s approach to life is guided by a simple piece of advice from his father: “Whatever you do, don’t be a lemon”.

• Mavros Ilios (Performance)

  The project "Black Sun" (Mavros Ilios) is a live musical and sonic performance by Cretan artist Yannis Linardakis and sound engineer Spyros Roumeliotis. The project merges traditional Cretan music with sound design and field recordings, creating a vibrant encounter between two distinct worlds: tradition and experimental sound. These two realms complement each other, synthesizing a unified sonic space where the spirit of the land (genius loci) interacts with space and memory.

• Panayiota Poirazi

  Panayiota (Yiota) Poirazi is a Research Director and Head of the Dendrites Lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion, Crete. Her research spans Computational and Experimental Neuroscience and Bio-inspired Machine Learning, focusing on how dendrites contribute to neural computations and form the basis of complex brain functions. She has received numerous accolades, including an Einstein Foundation Fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, an ERC Starting Grant, and the SNF-HFRI Theodore Papazoglou Award for achieving an "A" rating in the 2023 ERC Advanced Grant call. She is the founder of the EMBO Workshop on Dendrites, which has been held biennially in Crete since 2016.

• Sonia Theodoridou

  Born in Veria, soprano Sonia Theodoridou dedicated herself to the art of lyric singing from an early age. She studied at the "Manolis Kalomiris" National Conservatory and, as a recipient of the Maria Callas Scholarship, continued her studies in Cologne and London under the mentorship of legendary figures such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Christa Ludwig. Throughout her illustrious career, she has performed in Europe’s most prestigious opera houses-from Berlin and Venice to Brussels and Paris. She has collaborated with world-renowned conductors, including Zubin Mehta, Antonio Pappano, and Sir Neville Marriner. Her extensive repertoire embraces the great heroines of opera, while her discography masterfully blends classical masterpieces with the Greek musical heritage, reflecting an artistic journey defined by passion, sensitivity, and a profound love for music.

• Stefania Papadimitriou

  Stefania Papadimitriou studied Mathematics, yet has dedicated her entire career to journalism. In recent years, she has been actively involved in feminism and social justice issues, focusing on gender inequalities and how they are represented (or obscured) in public discourse. She focuses on the experiences and narratives that are often dismissed as "excessive" or "difficult." Stefania is a firm believer that reporting can, and should, be clear, evidence-based, and unapologetically principled, rejecting the notion of maintaining "equal distances" when it comes to human rights.

• Stefanos Aretakis

  Stefanos Aretakis is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, specializing in the mathematical architecture of general relativity. Using differential geometry, he translates the abstract concepts of gravity and spacetime into rigorous mathematics. Following his PhD at Cambridge and prestigious appointments at Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study, he established his reputation by discovering the "Aretakis instability", a foundational breakthrough proving that extreme black holes become highly unstable under specific conditions. Today, his research tackles the "gluing problem," exploring how different regions of spacetime interact under Einstein’s equations, while also analyzing the long-term behavior of waves across black hole backgrounds. Ultimately, his theoretical frameworks provide the mathematical scaffolding necessary to interpret real-world astronomical observation.

• Xeni Dimitriou

  Xeni Dimitriou was born in Aigio, Achaea, in 1952. She served in the Prosecutorial Corps for 41 years, from 1978 to 2019, and was the second woman to ever be appointed as a prosecutor in Greece. In 2012, she was promoted to Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court. From 2016 to 2019, she reached the highest office, serving as the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Greece. She considers it a profound blessing that, during her career, she served as a Juvenile Prosecutor for a longer period than any other prosecutorial official in the history of the Greek justice system.