Recent cross-border and societal challenges in our continent has increased the need of information and communication technologies (ICT) more than ever. Observing the upcoming challenges and continuous raising issues of our times has obliged in some way European countries and more specifically European Commission, as its instrumental office, to enforce several Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) to solve them. ICT technologies are of the main axes of these actions and act in several societal and research domains such as health, agriculture, security and surveillance, cultural heritage and several others. The main target of this talk would be to profoundly explain how one of the most influential and intriguing ICT domain, namely computer vision and machine learning, facilitates the creation of really smart acting and useful artificial intelligence tools so as to  tackle numerous of such challenges and creates a clear roadmap to future collaborations, advances and promises. The talk will include amongst others, how computer vision and deep learning can be applied in visual data from surveillance cameras in the domain of security and surveillance, such as fire, flood and smoke detection from CCTV, traffic management cameras or even IP cameras in nursing homes and hospitals to secure, facilitate and advance European cities and its citizens. Specific interest will also be placed in the preservation of digital cultural heritage and how people can collaborate to share, learn and teach tangible and intangible heritage by leveraging computer vision, immersive and augmented reality technologies, enforcing social cohesion and a better understanding amongst nations.

About the Speaker:  Dr. Konstantinos Avgerinakis (M) received his Diploma degree in computer and telecommunication engineering from the University of Thessaly in 2009, and the Phd degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Surrey in 2015. He is the CTO, founder and head of the research and development in computer vision and deep learning department of Catalink Ltd since 2017. His current research interests include computer vision and statistical video processing for event detection and recognition, human activity and facial expression recognition. Konstantinos Avgerinakis served as a technical manager of H2020 ICT V4Design and deputy technical manager in H2020 ICT MindSpaces, while he participated in many other H2020 and FP7 European projects (i.e. PREVISION, Trutonomy, ROBORDER, SuitcEyes, Dem@Care, beAWARE). He co-authored more than 40 publications in refereed journals and international conferences, while he has also served as a reviewer in a high number of international journals and conferences.

About the Company: Catalink Ltd is a Software Development SME founded in 2017. The company has established a multi-disciplinary team offering expertise in data science, machine learning, performance optimization, multimedia analysis, situational awareness, as well as project management. The company has broad expertise in computer vision, image processing and multimedia applications, such as human activity detection and recognition from wearable and surveillance cameras (CCTV), video concept extraction, semantic segmentation for accurate crisis event detection in visual content, content-based image retrieval and dynamic texture recognition. Currently Catalink has successfully acquired 3 H2020 European SU, ICT and MG project funding.