Nikos Minadakis

Nikos Minadakis

Nikos Minadakis is a software engineer, semantic architect and large scale projects manager. He graduated from the Department of Computers Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, and holds an MSc in Computer Science and Technology. He has expertise in e-research infrastructures design and development, conceptual modeling and semantic information systems implementation. He is a founding member of Advance Services, a deep tech enterprise and was a former technology supervisor and software engineer at the Foundation of Hellas and Technology (FORTH) from 2013 until 2019. He has participated in many National and European Projects, including PHAROS Artreseach, Lifewatch, iMarine, BlueBRIDGE and has co-authored more than 40 scientific publications.

 

Main publications:

1. N. Minadakis, Y. Marketakis, H. Kondylakis, G. Flouris, M. Theodoridou, M. Doerr, G. de Jong. “X3ML Framework: An Effective Suite for Supporting Data Mappings”. Workshop for Extending, Mapping and Focusing the CRM – co-located with TPDL’2015, Poznan, Poland, September 2015.

2. N. Minadakis, Y. Marketakis, C. Bekiari, M. Doerr, N. Bailly, A. Gougousis, S. Nikolopoulou, D. Mavraki, C. Arvanitidis. “LifeWatch Greece Data-Services: On Supporting Metadata and Semantics Integration for the Biodiversity Domain”. In 13th International Congress on the Zoogeography and Ecology of Greece and Adjacent Regions (ICZEGAR’2015), Heraklion, Crete, October 2015.

3. C. Arvanitidis, E. Chatzinikolaou, N. Bailly, E. Panteri, C. Bekiari, M. Doerr, N. Minadakis, Y. Marketakis, S. Faulwetter, K. Keklikoglou, D. Mavraki, S. Nikolopoulou, A. Oulas, E. Pafilis, N. Pattakos, C. Pavloudi, T. Patkos, K. Varsos, V. Gerovasileiou, T. Bourtzis, J. Lagnel, A. Gougousis (and 29 others). “LifeWatchGreece: Construction and operation of the national Research Infrastructure in the framework of the LifeWatch ESFRI”. In 13th International Congress on the Zoogeography and Ecology of Greece and Adjacent Regions (ICZEGAR’2015), Heraklion, Crete, October 2015.

José Antonio Zaíño Rodríguez

José Antonio Zaíño Rodríguez

Full Stack Engineer at LifeWatch ERIC.

He holds a degree in Telecommunication Technologies Engineering and a master’s degree in Telematics and Telecommunication Networks. He specialises in full stack software development, working on both frontend and backend technologies. Since 2020, he has been working in the private sector, focusing on building and optimising software solutions. Currently, he is developing the LifeWatch Search Engine, available at search.lifewatch.eu.

Pierluigi Calasso

Pierluigi Calasso

Pierluigi Calasso is the Help Desk Technician of the LifeWatch ERIC 1st Level Help Desk.
He supports the users of the infrastructure through the management of requests coming from the LifeWatch ERIC Help Desk service, by directly replying to the inquiries or forwarding them to the appropriate person within the infrastructure.
He is an expert in customer care services, having worked as web tracking specialist advisor and quality analyst for international brands during his last work experiences.
Pierluigi has a web designer background and a great passion for everything concerning new technologies and the internet world.

Eftychia Tzafesta

Eftychia Tzafesta

Data Science Specialist
She holds a Master’s in Ichthyology and Aquatic Environmental Sciences from the University of Thessaly and a Ph.D. from the University of Salento, where she applied innovative molecular techniques to assess biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. Her research integrated fieldwork, laboratory analyses and data-driven approaches to explore traditional and molecular tools for understanding biodiversity changes and supporting conservation efforts. Over the years she has published several scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals and actively contributed to conferences, seminars and workshops.
She currently works as a data scientist, specializing in developing policies and strategies for the collection, organization, storage, and accessibility of (meta)data, with a strong emphasis on harmonization, interoperability challenges, and FAIR data management. She is involved in various European projects that focus on the entire data lifecycle within environmental research.

Gabriel Pelouze

Developer for cloud-based virtual research environments

Gabriel has a PhD in plasma astrophysics and postdoctoral research experience. His research focused on the heating mechanisms in the Sun’s atmosphere, using a wide range of remote-sensing data analysis methods, as well as HPC simulations. At LifeWatch ERIC, he contributes to the development of the NaaVRE platform and the co-development of Virtual Labs for the research community. To that end, he uses modern software development and devOps practices. He is involved in all the steps of the process, from designing the software to delivering it as a service to the researchers. This includes front-end development, microservice applications design and implementation, system administration, and service operation.

Zhiming Zhao

Zhiming Zhao

Technical manager of VLIC
He is the technical manager of VLIC and leads the development of innovative Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Virtual Laboratory (VL) solutions to support advanced data- and computing- intensive research activities. He obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 2004. He is an associate professor and Chair of the Multiscale Networked Systems (MNS) research group at the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam.
His research interests include Cloud computing, data science, scientific workflow management, Digital Twins, and Blockchain. He coordinates the development of the ENVRI Knowledge Base and Notebook as a VRE (NaaVRE) framework. He is an IEEE senior member and serves as the managing editor of the Journal of Cloud Computing.

Main publications:

1. Li, N., Farshidi, S. & Zhao, Z. Search Multiple Types of Research Assets From Jupyter Notebook. Softw Pract Exp spe.3406 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3406
2. Wang, Y., Tripathi, S., Farshidi, S., Zhao, Z.: D-VRE: From a Jupyter-enabled Private Research Environment to Decentralized Collaborative Research Ecosystem. Blockchain: Research and Applications. 100244 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100244.
3. Zhao, Z., Koulouzis, S., Bianchi, R., Farshidi, S., Shi, Z., Xin, R., Wang, Y., Li, N., Shi, Y., Timmermans, J., Kissling, W.D.: Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE): From private notebooks to a collaborative cloud virtual research environment. Softw Pract Exp. spe.3098 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3098.

Lucia Vaira

Lucia Vaira

Service Centre ICT Coordinator

Computer engineer, with a PhD in Information Engineering at the University of Salento, Lucia Vaira is the Service Centre ICT Coordinator at LifeWatch ERIC. She has collaborated for several years with the Database and Information Systems research group of the Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Italy, where she worked on medical informatics, database modelling, data warehouses, and all aspects related to the main issues existing when dealing with data (security, quality, incompleteness, inconsistency, integrity, uncertainty, etc.). She is co-author of more than 30 publications and her research interests and activities include the definition of policies, procedures, models and technologies to be used in collecting, organising, storing and accessing (meta)data with particular attention to the harmonisation and interoperability challenges and the FAIR data management.

Main publications

S. Islam, D. Papale, L. Vaira, I. Rosati, J. Peterseil, C. Pichot. (2024) Navigating taxonomic complexity: A
use-case report on FAIR scientific name-matching service usage in ENVRI Research Infrastructures. Research Ideas and Outcomes 10: e121871. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.10.e121871

Di Muri C., Arvanitidis C., Basset A., De Giorgi R., Rosati I., Vaira L. and Mancinelli G. (2023) The validation case on invasive crustaceans of the LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative: State of the art and next steps forward. Front. Environ. Sci. 10:1038635. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.1038635

Kechagioglou X., Vaira L., Tomassino P., Fiore N., Basset A., Rosati I. (2022) EcoPortal: An Environment for FAIR Semantic Resources in the Ecological Domain. S4BioDiv 2021: 3rd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity, held at JOWO 2021: Episode VII The Bolzano Summer of Knowledge, September 11-18, 2021, Bolzano, Italy. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2969/paper6-s4biodiv.pdf