Athanasios Koutras

Athanasios Koutras was born in Athens, Greece, on November 11, 1973. In 1991 he enrolled in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras and he was awarded the Diploma of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1996. In 1997 he began his doctoral thesis, at the Wired Telecommunications Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras. The title of his doctoral dissertation is: “Blind Separation and Recognition of Speech in a multi-simultaneous speaker environment” and Supervisor Professor George Kokkinakis. His doctoral dissertation was successfully defended in December 2001, when he was awarded the title of Doctor of Philosophy of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

He has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the WCL of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the University of Patras, and Professor Nikolaos Fakotakis from May 2003 on various research and development projects funded by the European Union until the end of January of 2004. At the same period, 2003-2004 he started his collaboration with the Technological Educational Institute of Patras as an Adjunct Laboratory Associate at the Department of Civil Works of Infrastructure, in which he remained until 2004-2005. Since the beginning of the ac. 2003-2004 he has worked as a Lab Associate and later as a Scientific Associate at the Department of Informatics and Mass Media of the TEI of Patras in Pyrgos, until 2007-2008. From the ac. 2006-2007 up until the year 2007-2008 he has also worked as a full-time lecturer in courses in the field of Digital Image, Audio and Video Processing at the Department of Management of Cultural Environment and New Technologies of the University of Ioannina at Agrinio. From January 2004 to December 2006, he has worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the Medical School, the Physiological Laboratory, at the Neurophysiology Unit and Prof. G. Kostopoulos in various research projects, studying the human brain functionality using non-invasive techniques and digital signal processing methodologies, funded by the RIKEN Institute in Japan. In addition, from January 2007 until May 2007 he was a member of the research team of Applied Neurosciences of the Medical Informatics Laboratory of the Medical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in research projects funded by the European Union.

In March 2008 he was elected Assistant Professor of the Department of Informatics and Media of the TEI of Patras in Pyrgos, where he worked until October 2018. During his tenure at the Department , he was Deputy Head of the Department (initially) and from 2009-2014 and from 2015-2017 Head of the Department. From November 2018 until May 2019 he was a member of the Academic Stuff of the Department of Computer Informatics Engineering of the Technical Educational Institute of Western Greece in Nafpaktos. From May 2019 until today, he is a member of the Academic Stuff of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Peloponnese. Since 2008, he has been teaching courses in the area of Digital Audio Processing, Digital Image Processing, Digital Signal Processing, Audiovisual Production, Multimedia Applications Production and other in the area of Information Technology. Additionally, he has supervised more than 160 completed theses at the Department of Informatics and Media.

Since the spring semester of the academic year 2018-2019, he has been teaching post-graduate courses in the Postgraduate Program Biomedical Engineering of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Patras.

He is the Founding Director of the SIGNAL, IMAGE PROCESSING & PATTERN RECOGNITION (SIPPRE) Research Group at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Peloponnese, in the field of signal and image processing, biomedical signal and image analysis and brain computer interfaces (BCI).

He is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece, IEEE, the European Neural Network Society (ENNS) and the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).