Greetings by:

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Christodoulos E. Angastiniotis studied Business Management & Management Sciences in the UK and he holds a postgraduate degree MSc in Management from Cranfield University.  Christodoulos E. Angastiniotis is the CEO and Managing Director of the VitaTrace Nutrition Ltd Group which is a Veterinary Nutritional and Pharmaceutical company with operations in Cyprus and internationally.  The company has received over the years export awards, quality awards and corporate social responsibility awards.

Christodoulos E. Angastiniotis is an exceptionally active businessman with very significant social contribution.  Christodoulos E. Angastiniotis serves as Founder President and Honorary President of the Cyprus Egypt Business Association, Member of the Board of Institute of Technology Cyprus, Member of the Board of the Wealth fare of Prisoners and Member of the Board Human Resources Development Authority.

In 2010 he was awarded by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Cyprus and the Cyprus Standard Authority the highest quality award for his exceptional contribution in upgrading quality in Cyprus.  He participated in many economic financial and business promotion seminars abroad where he presented a number of papers on the role of Cyprus as a Regional Financial and Commercial Center.

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Stelios Himonas is the Permanent Secretary of the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy. He previously served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice and Public Order, as well as Director of the Department of Electronic Communications and Director of Telecommunications at the Ministry of Communications and Works. From 2012 onwards, he has been appointed from the Council of Ministers as Digital Champion of the Republic of Cyprus, while having previously served as member of the Board of Directors of the Research and Innovation Foundation (then called Research Promotion Foundation), and the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta). At European level, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), as well as Chairman of the Regulatory Affairs Working Group (WGRA) of the CEPT/ECC. He is a holder of Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Science and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York in Stony Brook. From 1989 until 1997, he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the New York Institute of Technology, USA, having also served as a Professor of Engineering and Informatics of Intercollege, Cyprus. From 1994 until 1997, he was collaborating with the Multimedia Communications Research Group of Bellcore’s Applied Research Division in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. Dr. Himonas has published numerous research papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings in the fields of detection and multimedia communications. He is listed in the Who is Who in the World, the Who is Who Among Human Services Professionals, and the Who is Who in American Education.

Moderators:

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Christos Ttiniozou has been focusing – over the past 20 years – on how to help organizations comply with regulatory obligations through the use of technology. He is the MD of iSPIRAL, a leading regulatory technology firm focusing mostly on sectors such as Banking & Other Financial Institutions, Payments, FX & Trading, Insurance, Cryptocurrency, Gaming/Gambling, Professional Services, etc. With work experience in the USA and Cyprus, Christos is responsible for formulating the strategic vision of iSPIRAL in developing an end-to-end Onboarding, KYC, AML & Fraud Solution to comprehensively address the compliance objectives and obligations set by regulators worldwide. Some of KYC, AML and GRC subjects Christos and iSPIRAL focus upon are Transaction Monitoring, Payment Screening, Transaction Fraud, Client Lifecycle Management, Risk Assessment, and more.

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Christos Ioannou is the Chief Transformation Officer at Bank of Cyprus.

He is responsible for setting, accelerating and overseeing the bank’s overall transformation agenda. In addition, he is responsible for improving strategic customer journeys with the goal of improving overall customer experience.

Christos’ vision is to transform the organization by adopting a customer centric operating model which will enable the delivery of quality product and services to meet lifestyle needs of customers.

Christos is a Charterholder of the CFA Institute, holds and BBA in Finance and an MSc in Global Finance.

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Elena Meli is the Manager Business Development, Alliances & Operations of Jinius, the new digital economy platform by Bank of Cyprus.

She is responsible for building and establishing relationships with customers, identifying new opportunities, managing and developing alliances with other digital ecosystems and key stakeholders in the economy. She oversees and takes care of the customers’ Jinius journey all the way.

Elena genuinely cares about the progress of people and the society. Her contribution has been fundamental from the very beginning of the conceptualisation and formation of the Jinius’ vision. She holds the passion, drive, and know-how required to introduce innovation to the market, as well as the expertise to onboard key stakeholders of the economy, in this tremendous effort that is required to effectively digitalise the Cypriot economy.

Elena holds a BSc degree in Computer Science and MSc in Information Science (Business Informatics).

Panelists:

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Born in 1979. He is a Certified Director in Corporate Governance with specialization in Banking from INSEAD (France) and a Certificated Professional Banker from The Chartered Banker Institute.  In 2010, founded Way Out Communications Ltd, a company providing consulting ,strategy and corporate governance advice services to multinational corporations and not for profit organisations. Way Out Communications Ltd is the exclusive advisor of “The Economist Events” and “The World in…” publication in Cyprus. From 2010 until 2018 Mr. Georgoulas was the General Manager in Cyprus. He is currently a non executive Director at ECOMMBX, FXCM, Swissquote and TFI Markets.  He served as a Member of the Board of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission and since 2013 he is an Alumnus of the United States Department of State’s International Visitors Leadership Program.

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Michael Ioannides is the Visa Europe Country Manager of Cyprus.  Michael is a notable professional with more than 20 years of experience in Payments and in executive management, having served at senior Executive roles. He has served as Chairman and previously as CEO of JCC and Chairman of the Visa Cyprus Executive Committee.

He commenced his career with Deloitte, focusing on financial services and advisory followed by the CFO position with JCC. 
Michael is a qualified accountant, member of ICPAC and graduated with distinction from University of Wales MBA’s program.  

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Nicolas Mesaritis currently holds the position of Chief Technology Officer for the last 4 years,

the last 12 months working for EcommBX Electronic Money Institution. Previously, he worked as a software

developer and payments consultant for financial software vendors TSYS and OpenWay. Nicholas is still actively

involved in software development and he is fascinated by new development in the space of software development and by fintech innovations especially in the area of automations.

Speakers:

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David Bundi is a Partner at EY Switzerland in the areas of Legal, Regulatory & Compliance with a focus on Financial Services. He is also the Metaverse Strategy & Regulatory Leader at EY Switzerland and an expert for Financial Crime Compliance, Digital Assets, Digitalization and the intersection of Law and Technology. David is advising clients in financial services and non-financial services industries since many years, particularly in Switzerland, the EU and the Middle East. Before joining EY, he was the Head of Compliance & RegTech and a Member of the Leadership Team at another BIG 4, the Chief Compliance Officer at an innovative Swiss Bank, and a Risk & Compliance Specialist in Zurich and New York at UBS. Prior to that, he worked as a Senior Compliance Officer at Swiss Private Banks. In his spare time, he is a well-known speaker at leading conferences around the globe, an author of various books and a guest lecturer in Legal & Compliance and Metaverse, Digital Assets and RegTech topics at universities in Switzerland and the US, and at a Business School in Latin America

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Andria is a Partner heading the Financial Services, Funds and Capital Markets practice of EY Law in Cyprus. She is an experienced banking and finance law practitioner and has been extensively involved in the establishment and operation of investment funds and licensed entities such as investment firms, fund managers and payment institutions. She is a Cyprus qualified lawyer and a member of the CIFA Legal and Regulatory Committee. Andria has advised on landmark financial transactions and is regularly opining on the regulatory framework applicable to digital innovative  solutions adopted by financial services companies.

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Dr Olga Shvarova, D.Phil (Oxon) is a global expert in technology transfer, commercialisation and innovation management including commercialisation strategy, technology appraisals, technology landscaping, IPR protection strategy, technology scouting, financial modelling and forecasts, and economic benefit assessment.

Dr Shvarova is a European Innovation Council (EIC) jury member, an expert with European Commission’s JRC in technology transfer and commercialisation advising on innovation policy and innovation landscapes at a system level, an advisor for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Centre for Technology Transfer, and a NIHR reviewer.

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Marios Polycarpou is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence at the University of Cyprus. He is also a Founding Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, an Honorary Professor of Imperial College London, and a Member of Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe). His teaching and research interests are in intelligent systems and networks, fault diagnosis, machine learning, and critical infrastructure systems. He has published more than 400 articles in refereed journals, edited books and refereed conference proceedings, and co-authored 7 books. He is also the holder of 6 patents. Prof. Polycarpou is the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Technical Field Award and the 2016 IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE and IFAC. He served as the President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2012-2013), as the President of the European Control Association (2017-2019), and as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2004-2010). His research work has been funded by several agencies and industry in Europe and the United States, including the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, the ERC Synergy Grant and the EU-Widening Teaming program.

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Christiana Ioannou is currently the Team Leader of the National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre (NCCC-Cy) of Cyprus at the Digital Security Authority. She received her PhD in 2017, from the University of Cyprus in Computer Science. Her research work focuses in Intrusion Detection Systems in the Internet of Things using Machine Learning Techniques.

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Niki Ioannou was employed in Cyta in 1995 and has been involved in all major product rollouts and network services throughout her career. Niki has a 12year experience in the development and management of internet products and services, strategy and development of convergent products (fixed and mobile) for the home and business markets. From 2011 to 2015 Niki worked in the Marketing department heading the development of new services for fixed voice and she has been a regular contributor in conferences abroad with regards to the IMS services development and evolution for Telco’s. From 2016 to 2019, Niki was heading the development of new services for the business market and managing the commercial deployment of various strategic projects like the evolution and upgrade of the fixed telephony network, the deployment of the Cloudmarketplace and cloud services, the commercial roll out of the FFTH network, the launch of cybersecurity services and many more.

Niki is a graduate of the NYIT University of New York with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (Summa Cum Laude), a holder of a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Arizona State University and an MBA degree from C.I.I.M., Cyprus.

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George Pratsos is an accomplished entrepreneur with a strong background in the Tech Education industry. He is the Founder and General Manager of Code School Cyprus, a startup dedicated to empowering young minds through computer science education. Previously, George served as the CEO of New Horizons Cyprus, where he successfully established the Cyprus and Greek franchises and developed key vendor partnerships. He also owns and operates AXIS Regional Academy which supports the Cisco Networking Academy program in Cyprus as well providing IT/ICT training and consulting services. With over two decades of experience in the industry, George brings a wealth of knowledge in Tech Education and Training, Business Development, Marketing, and Operations. He holds an MBA in International Management from the University of London and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Manchester, UK

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Stylianos was born in Limassol, Cyprus. He studied IT at UCL in London and then Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge. He started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 19. He already has several ventures in his portfolio. Specifically, and under the umbrella of Heart Group of which he is the founder, Stylianos is the co-founder of Heart Cyprus, the largest destination branding initiative promoting Cyprus. The lineup of the group’s companies includes a govtech company whose software is used by 150 municipalities and community councils and has recently been selected in the consortium to build the e-government platform for all the municipalities of Cyprus. Stylianos is also highly active in real estate. His group currently holds 10 projects in its portfolio, including the renovation and construction of boutique hotels, co-living and commercial spaces. Since 2017, he is the co-founder of Reflect, the largest technology festival organized in Cyprus and the wider region. Through this festival, important business synergies and actions for Cyprus and beyond have been achieved, with world-class founders, investors and researchers showing practical interest in operating their ventures on the island. In 2021 he was one of the initiators and founders of Techisland, a non-profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the growth of the tech ecosystem in Cyprus. Currently, Stylianos is also a venture partner at ZeroGravity Capital , a Slovak-based VC fund.