Dr. Loretta Thomaidis MD PhD is an Assistant Professor in Developmental Pediatrics in the Second Department of Pediatrics, Athens University; Doctor of Medicine with honors of the Athens University School of Medicine with postgraduate studies in Great Britain in the field of pediatric development. She is the Greek representative to the European Academy of Childhood Disability since 1993.
Dr. Thomaidis is in charge of the Unit of Pediatric Development in the Second Pediatric Clinic of the “P & A Kyriakou” Children’s Hospital which is designed to assess, investigate and deal with children with special needs. One aspect of this unit’s work is to diagnose and deal with gifted and talented children, to test their school readiness, to detect deviations from normal at an early age, and to diagnose and treat developmental disorders at an early stage.
Her numerous publications, her participation in Greek and international conferences, and the various distinctions she has been awarded are an example of her intense research activity.
Athanasios Tsiamis is an Educational Psychologist, member of the Board of Directors of the Society for the Advancement of the Education of Creative / Talented / Gifted Children and Adolescents, and a member of the Association of Greek Psychologists, the British Psychological Society (CPsychol) and the European Council of Children with High Capabilities.
He has participated in the McGill University research group on the identification of gifted / talented children in alternative ways. He has taught in an adult education program on the subject of giftedness. He has conducted a training program for unemployed teachers on the subject of teaching gifted / talented children. From 1996 to date he has designed and implemented enrichment programs for gifted children aimed at fostering creativity and providing breath and depth of knowledge on specific topics to mainstream primary school students. He is an author of a book on giftedness and has participated in European and National conferences with papers mainly related to the particular characteristics, the identification, and education of gifted children in the Greek Education system.
He has studied psychology at Deree College in Athens and Educational Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Ioannis Tyrlis is a secondary school teacher and an active member of the Greek Mathematical Society since 1983. He has served as General Secretary of the Mathematical Society for twelve years, Vice President of the Competitions Committee, director of the “EUCLID A”, “EUCLID B”, “EUCLID C”, “Mathematical Review” and “ASTROLAVOS” periodical publications, member of the Committee for the Discussion and Resolving of Issues pertaining to the General Examinations, member of the Organizing Committee of the Panhellenic Conference on Mathematical Education of the Greek Mathematical Society, member of the Organizing Committee for the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad, as well as member of the Problem Selection Committee of the 2nd Balkan Mathematical Olympiad for Juniors.
His literary work includes publications in the EUCLID B and EUCLID C magazines, his work has been presented at scientific conferences, and he has also participated in a team which co authored 4 books.
He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of the University of Athens. He has completed post graduate studies in the Teaching and Methodology of Mathematics, and is a candidate PhD at the Department of Primary Education at the University of Athens. He is also a member of the organizing committee of this Conference.
Dr. Dimitris Nanopoulos was born in Athens on 13 September 1948 and studied physics at the University of Athens, where he graduated in 1971. Two years later he obtained his doctorate in Theoretical High Energy Physics from the University of Sussex in England. He has been a senior member of the research staff at the Center of European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He has also been a Curie Fellow at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and a Research Fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. In 1989 he was appointed Professor at the Physics Department of the Texas A & M University, College Station, where, since 1992, he has been a Distinguished Professor of Physics; since 2002 he holds the Mitchell-Heep Chair in High Energy Physics endowed with the amount of $1, 5 Million dollars. He is also Director of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) Astroparticle Physics Group where he also directs a research department of the World Laboratory, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 1997 he was appointed regular member of the Academy of Athens. His main research activity focuses on High Energy Physics and Cosmology. The aim of his research is the creation of a unified theory of all forces in Nature, a Theory of Everything, which will provide a scientific explanation of the universe, how it appeared, how it evolved, and how it has reached its current morphology.
He is the author of over 625 original papers, all published in journals with critics and high impact factor, including 14 books. He has over 37,500 citations placing him as the fourth most cited Physicist of all time, according to the November 2001 and the September 2004 census (University of Stanford). Since 1988 he has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and since 1992 a member of the Italian Physical Society. In 1996 he was made Commander of the Order of Honour of the Greek Republic, and in May 2005, a year dedicated to honoring the 100 years of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he won for the second time (first time in 1999) the award of the Gravity Research Institute, based in Massachusetts, USA. He was awarded the Onassis International Prize in October 2006, while in 2009 he was awarded the “Enrico Fermi” International Prize by the Italian Physical Society.
From January 2005 until December 2010 he was National Representative to the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN); from 2005 to 2009 he served as President of the Greek National Council for Research and Technology (ESET), and from 2005 to 2006 he was National Representative to the European Space Agency (ESA).
Dr. Michael Green is an associate professor of Cognitive Development and of Maths Education at the UNC Charlotte University. Dr. Michael Green earned an Ed. D. from Harvard in 1977. His graduate study was in child development. His research interests are in constructivist theory and its relationship to elementary mathematics education. Dr. Green has authored books and research articles on cognitive, social, and language development in children and adolescents. He is co-author Constructing Number Sense in Elementary and Middle Grades Classrooms, a constructivist approach to teaching mathematics. Dr. Green was recently a Faculty in Residence at Thomasboro Elementary School, where student math performance soared in response to constructivist inspired instruction. Together with Dr. Piel, he has delivered numerous national and international articles, as well as participated in scores of teacher workshops about the Comprehensively Applied Manipulative Mathematics Program (CAMMP).
Dr. Green has worked with the design and implementation of an elementary math curriculum at the Socrates Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina. The constructivist-inspired approach to the Comprehensively Applied Manipulative Mathematics Program (CAMMP) has revolutionized math instruction at the school. Based on student performance, the Socrates Academy has been recognized every year as a School of Distinction since the first year of testing.
Dr. Athanasopoulou is a teacher in secondary school education at Socrates Academy Charter School in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she teaches mathematics, in Greek, to children who have been certified as gifted, she is also employed as a part time tertiary education teacher at the UNC in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She graduated from the Mathematics Department of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki and has completed postgraduate studies in Secondary Education Mathematics at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where she prepared her PhD thesis.
Dr. Athanasopoulou has been working as a teacher in private and public secondary and tertiary education from 1984 to date and she is a member of the organizing committee of this Conference.
Dr. George Pavlidis is a Professor of Learning Disabilities at the University of Macedonia. He is a life member of the International Academy of Learning Disabilities Research and an Honorary University Fellow at Brunel University, London. He is the founder and director of dyslexia and ophthalmokinesis laboratories at universities in England, Greece and the USA.
He is the inventor of the ophthalmokinesis test (PAVLIDIS TEST) which allows, even from a pre-school age, the diagnosis of dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. He has developed a method for dealing with dyslexia, learning disabilities and attention deficit through the use of a PC and Multimedia. He has conducted 20 major research programs in England, Greece and the U.S. His photoelectric invention has been endorsed by renowned universities such as Harvard, Penn State, Boston, and Columbia, as well as countries such as Denmark, Finland and Greece.
His scientific publications have appeared in international journals and conferences, and he has also published four books in English. He has participated as a speaker in numerous international conferences; he has repeatedly been honored with the presidency of 18 international conferences and is the Chairman of all global dyslexia conferences since 1983.
He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, and completed his doctoral dissertation at the Department of Psychology of the University of Manchester in England, where he began his academic career as a lecturer at the age of 23.
Dr Brenda Romanoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. At the same time, she is a consultant for Charlotte Mecklenberg Schools for the Talent Development Program in the advisement of identification and service to students who are gifted. She also serves on the admissions board for the only gifted K-8 school in North Carolina.
She obtained her BS in Elementary Education and Learning Disabilities at Eastern Kentucky University, her MED in Special Education at Univeristy of Cincinnati and her Ph.D. in Special Education and Rehabiliation at University of Arizona.
She has published numerous research articles and curriculum guides. She has also participated in several conferences by presenting her research and giving lectures.
Agnes Mariakaki is a psychologist and educator. She manages MindSearch, a company that studies consumer psychology. She has worked as a counselor and therapist for children and families and has published in journals such as Child and Young Parents. During the past 15 years she has conducted over 4000 focus groups and has also taught seminars on communication for companies and individuals.
She studied psychology at Lancaster University and has specialized in Applied Anthropology and Mythology at the Institute of Applied Behavioral Technologies in Princeton. She is an accredited Neuro-Linguistic Programming trainer certified by the International Society of NLP.
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