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Dr. Ioannis Boziaris

Ioannis S. Boziaris is Professor of University of Thessaly since 2007, Director of Lab of Marketing & Technology of Aquatic Products and Foods, and former Head of the Dept of Food Science and Nutrition of University of Thessaly. He graduated from the Dept, of Food Science and Technology of Agricultural University of Athens (1995), got his MSc in Food Science from University of Leeds, UK, (1996), and his PhD in Food Microbiology from University of Surrey, UK (2000).

From 2002 to 2006 he worked as post-doctoral researcher in Agricultural University of Athens and as consultant for the private sector in the field of water sanitation, food safety and quality management systems. His interests concern the quality, safety, and processing of aquacultured products. He has more than 100 publications in international scientific journals and conferences, with more than 2500 citations and with h-index 25, he is editorial board member of 3 international scientific journals of high impact factor and reviewer in more than 30.

He is also board member of Hellenic Technological Platform for Aquaculture and assessor of Hellenic Accreditation System for Food Safety Management Systems Certification Bodies.

Mr. Petros Kokkalis

Petros Kokkalis has been actively involved in public service for the past 25 years, developing social innovation focused on human and sustainable development.

In 2019 he was elected MEP with the Progressive Alliance – Syriza ticket, representing Kosmos: an association seeking to put the SDGs in the heart of the European policymaking, and aiming at the empowerment and engagement of civil society and all stakeholders to take bottom-up action for implementing the European Green Deal and the SDGs.

He is a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) and a substitute member of the Committee on Budgets (BUDG), the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI), and the Committee on Fisheries (PECH). In the Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development he is the co-chair of the SDGs Working Group.

He studied Modern History at the University of Hampshire, and earned his master’s degree in public administration at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

He was co-founder and secretary of the non-governmental environmental Organization Earth (2009 – 2021) whose work on environmental awareness and education for sustainable development has been awarded by the International Union for the Protection of the Environment (IUCN).

He was elected and served as the Vice-Mayor responsible for economic development and climate change in the municipality of Piraeus (2014 – 2019), where he promoted sustainable entrepreneurship and support of start-ups in the maritime economy.

The European Commission has acknowledged its work, awarding the Blue Growth Piraeus initiative at the European Entrepreneurship Promotion Competition 2018.

During his term of office he led the humanitarian support during the Refugee Crisis in the period 2015-2016 and served as the President of the Municipal Council for Refugees.

Dr. George Vlontzos

George Vlontzos is an Associate Professor, Director of the Laboratory of Agricultural Economics and Consumer Behavior. His research interests focus on, among others, economic and environmental efficiency assessment, and on consumer behavior characteristics for agricultural inputs and foodstuff. For this, various models are being implemented like Data Envelopment Analysis, Stochastic Frontier, Artificial Neural Networks, the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Health Belief Model, etc. He has published several papers in journals under double blind peer review evaluation and participated in international congresses and seminars. Finally, he has participated, in competitive projects co-financed by the EU, national funding as well as private funding projects. Dr. George Vlontzos teaches agricultural economics and consumer behavior at the University of Thessaly, Greece. He was a visiting professor at the Center of Applied Optimization, University of Florida, USA from 1-2-2016 until 31-7-2016.

Mr. Spilios Livanos

Spilios Livanos is born in Athens in 1967.

He graduated from Athens College. He studied Economics and Political Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA and International Relations and Comparative Political Analysis at the University of Reading, UK.

He was employed at the European Commission’s Social Fund in Bruxelles, then moved back in Greece as an executive on corporate development of private enterprises. In 2002, he founded a construction and real estate management company operating in Greece and Belgium.

In 2007 he was elected for the first time Member of the Greek Parliament. In 2009 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Political Planning of New Democracy and in 2013 Secretary General of Political and Strategic Planning of New Democracy.

In 2016 he was appointed Special Counselor for Entrepreneurship to the leader of New Democracy, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In 2019 he served as Parliamentary Representative for New Democracy in the Greek Parliament.

He was a member of the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Cultural and Educational Affairs, the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Economic Affairs, the Special Standing Parliamentary Committee on the Financial Statement and the General Balance Sheet and the implementation of the State Budget.

On the 4th of January 2021 he was appointed Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Food.

He speaks English and French. He is married to Domna Kyrzopoulou, lawyer with whom shares three children, Dionysis, Danae and Alice.

Mr. Tassos Haniotis

Tassos Haniotis is Director for “Strategy, Simplification and Policy Analysis” in the DG for Agriculture and Rural development of the European Commission. The mission of the Directorate is to contribute to the overall strategic orientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) by (i) providing policy perspectives and analysis on topics related to the agriculture and rural economy in the European Union, including in the development of the EU’s annual outlook baseline, (ii) coordinating the DG’s impact assessment of major policy initiatives by providing evidence-based analysis to support legislative proposals, and to support the adaptation of the CAP through the evaluation of its effectiveness, efficiency and impact based on its common monitoring and evaluation framework.

He has also held posts as Acting Director for Direct Payments, as Head of Unit in the Units for Agricultural Policy Analysis and Perspectives, and for Agricultural Trade Policy Analysis in DG AGRI, as Deputy Head of Cabinet of former European Commissioner for Agriculture Franz Fischler, and as Agricultural Counsellor in the European Commission’s Delegation in the US.

Tassos holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia in the U.S., and a B.A. in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business in his native Greece, and was a visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Agricultural Studies, Wye College, University of London, focusing on EU-US agricultural trade relations in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations before joining the European Commission.

A member of the Executive of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium during 2012-14, Tassos currently represents the European Commission in the G20’s Rapid Response Forum and GEOGLAM Advisory Committee.

Mr. Geert Wilms

Geert Wilms studied Horticulture at Wageningen University and Business Administration at Open University. For more than 20 years Geert has been director of Agricultural Innovation Brabant (LIB), and he is consultant at Royal Haskoning DHV.

LIB is a partnership of Province North-Brabant and farmers organization ZLTO. Each year more than 30 innovative projects are initiated and supported, with the participation of hundreds of (agricultural) businesses. Several workshops are organized and guided. Geert is directly accountable to the President of ZLTO and regional Minister of agriculture in North-Brabant. One project he started and is very proud of: “Smart irrigation in agriculture; 3.000 farmers participating with 60.000 hectares, and 25% gain of efficiency in water use”.

 Geert Wilms also is a speaker, discussion leader and initiator of cooperation in different regions in Europe. He is/was involved in more than 15 European funded projects, for example Water management, Water conservation, Agrispin, Eurodairy, EU-PIG and STRING.

Dr. Demetrios Kouretas

Dr. Kouretas has a BSc in Pharmacy from University of Patras (Greece) 1985, PhD in Biochemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 1989 (Greece) and Post-doc at Harvard Medical School from 1990-1992. Dr. Kouretas has been staff member in the University of Thessaly since 1996 and from 2007 is Professor of ‘Animal Physiology – Toxicology’ at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly (Greece).  He has co-authored 220 articles in peer-reviewed journals and about 100 invited lectures in national and international conferences. According to Google scholar Dr. Kouretas’ publications have been cited 10000 times and their ‘h-index’ is 55. In 2017 has been elected member of the European Commission Committee (Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging risks, SCHEER) and the same year (2017) President of the Hellenic Society of Toxicology and Director of the National Master Program in Toxicology.

He has founded the spin-off company FoodOxys aimed at developing bio functional nutrition. He is Associate Editor in the ‘Food & Chemical Toxicology’ (from 2015), ‘Toxicology Reports’ (from 2017) journals of Elsevier and Academic Editor in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity (from 2017) and Antioxidants (from 2018).

Dr. Charalambos Billinis

Dr. Billinis was qualified as a Veterinarian from the School of Veterinary Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1993. In 1998 he was awarded a PhD thesis in “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases” at the same University. European Veterinary Specialisation in Zoological Medicine – Wildlife Population Health (ECZM).

He is Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Parasitology of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Dean of the Department of Public and One Health and Vice Rector of Finance, Planning and Development of the University of Thessaly.

Grant holder in 21 research projects and member of the coordinating team of the EU funded project “WildTech” (€ 6,000,000) for the development of molecular and serological tests for the detection of pathogens that are transmitted from wildlife to domestic animals and humans.

He has published 9 chapters, 140 articles in international journals and 151 abstracts in conference proceedings. Member of the European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIHs) in the field of Digital Health entitled “Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Industry Transformation through Artificial Intelligence Digital Services (Health-Hub)”.

Mr. Simos Kedikoglou

Simos Kedikoglou was elected member of the Hellenic Parliament for the Prefecture of Evia with New Democracy Party in the elections of 2004, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2019.

He served as Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and Government Spokesman from 2012 to 2014.

He was a member of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, of the Standing Committee on National Defense & Foreign Affairs, Special Standing Committee on European Affairs and of the Committee on Armaments Programs & Contracts.

In addition, he served as head of the Greek Delegation and Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization of Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

Simos Kedikoglou is a journalist. He has been a political, parliamentary and diplomatic editor in newspapers “Kathimerini”, “Apogevmatini”, “Apofasi” and “Xora”. He also presented and participated in broadcasts of TV and radio stations (ERT, MEGA, FLASH etc.). For many years he was a contributor to CNN International’s World Report show, and on CNN’s “Q&A” show in Atlanta, USA.

He speaks English, Russian, and French.

He is married and proud father of two children

Dr. George Stylios

The Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Food, Mr. George Stylios, holds a PhD in Informatics from the Department of Computer Engineering & Informatics of the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras, he holds an MSc degree in Information Systems from the City University of London, and he graduated from the department of Physics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

He is a faculty member at the Ionian University. He worked as a researcher at the University of Patras as well as in Greek and European development programs. He was the Head of the Department of Applications and Informatics in Administration and Economics at the TEI of the Ionian Islands.

He has been a Member of Parliament for Arta with New Democracy, since May 2012, as well as head of the Greek Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He served as Deputy Minister of Education and Religions and Deputy Minister of Digital Governance. He has also been the Chairman of the Nutrition Committee for Educational Affairs of the Parliament, a member of the Finance Committee of the Parliament, the Government and Trade and the Special Monastery Committee of Bulgaria, as well as a Representative of the Parliament in the Parliamentary Assembly of Parliamentary Assembly of the Southeast Europe Cooperation Process.