About

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, George Metakides received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from Cornell University in 1971. He pursued an academic career at MIT, Cornell and Rochester University until 1978, when he returned to Greece after being elected to the Chair of Logic at the University of Patras. Since 1984 he has held senior positions with responsibility for Research and Development policy, funding and international co-operation in European institutions.

He established and headed the department for Basic Research and International Scientific Relations in Information Technologies at the European Commission from 1988 to 1993. He was the Director of the ESPRIT (European Strategic Program for Information Technologies), from 1993 until its completion in 1998, followed by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Program (1998-2002). In 2002 he returned to his professorship at Patras until his retirement in 2012. He has contributed to the establishment of international institutions (including the launch of the World Wide Web consortium in 1993), has received a number of awards and honorary degrees and is a corresponding member of several National Academies.

He will be visiting professor at TU Wien and IWM senior fellow in the Fall of 2023, he is co-founder and Honorary President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum, and Advisor to several international organizations. He is involved in the analysis of the economic, political and social impact of digitization related regulatory issues and the promotion of international cooperation towards a digital ecosystem respecting shared human values.

He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Technical University of Bucharest and the University of Thessaloniki and is an honorary professor of the University of Moscow. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary member of the Romanian Academy of Science. He has received the Medal of Honor of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, the Polish Information Society Recognition Award, for his efforts to build co-operation between IT professionals in the EU, the Nokia Award and the Telecom Europe Prize for his contribution to the development and dissemination of new information and communication technologies in Europe.