Socrates Dimitriadis
I was born and raised in Kilkis – a small town of Central Macedonia, Greece – but have lived in several other places such as Ioannina, Athens, Xanthi, Heraklion, Providence, Zürich, Seattle, Boston and Washington DC. I'm a computing professional with a special interest and expertise in the World Wide Web, and I have a keen interest in sports, especially road running. I love traveling (who doesn't?) and I try to combine it with outdoor activities such as hiking, snowboarding, snorkeling and boating.
Education
As a kid, I spent many years learning foreign languages (French, German, Italian) that I can hardly speak any more. Later, I studied computer science at the Universities of Ioannina and Crete, and then I kind of switched to cognitive science at Brown University. A few yeas ago I completed a flight school for single engine land & sea airplanes, and nowadays I'm trying to study a bit of business administration. I've always been intrigued by the process of learning, both academically and personally, and I'm a strong supporter of lifelong education.
Brown University
[PhD thesis] Visual Recognition with a Large Scale Network of Dynamical Systems
[MSc thesis] A Network of Networks Approach to Computational Modeling of Pop-out Phenomena in Visual Attention
University of Crete
[MSc thesis] An Image Retrieval Platform Based on a Biologically Inspired Architecture
University of Ioannina
[BSc thesis] Human-Computer Interaction with Gesture Recognition
Business
Founder & Full-Stack Developer
It started as a hobby while in grad school and ended up becoming a full fledged business. A combination of right timing and risk seeking made Greek-Movies the first search engine of - exclusively Greek - video streaming, and a site that was serving one million visitors per month. As a full stack developer I was taking care of everything, from system administration and back-end development to front-end responsive design and adertising. It may not be the trend any more but it gave me the privilege of experiencing software development to its fullest extent and I loved it. Working on every aspect of a website, from the engineering all the way to the marketing and the regulatory compliance, offers a unique perspective on the Internet.
Teaching
George Mason University, Department of Computer Science
- Introduction to Computer Programming with Python (fall 2019/2020, spring 2019/2020)
- Object Oriented Programming with Java (spring 2019, fall 2020)
George Mason University, Department of Computer Science
- Introduction to Computer Programming with Python (fall 2018)
George Mason University, Department of Computational and Data Sciences
- Modeling and Simulation (spring 2018)
Brown University, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences
- Neural Modeling Laboratory (spring 2005/2006/2007/2009)
- Cognition (fall 2006)
- Quantitative Methods in Psychology (fall 2004)
- Visualizing Vision (fall 2005)
6th Technical High School of Heraklion, Greece
- UNIX Operating System
- Multimedia
- Computer Applications
University of Crete, Department of Computer Science
- Computational Vision (spring 2002)
- Computer Networks (fall 2001)
- Intelligent Systems (spring 2003)
Vocational Training Institute of Kilkis, Greece
- Programming in C (spring 2001)
- Sound Processing and Synthesis (spring 2001)
Research
I initially worked on neural networks because I found it an excellent approach to understanding (and implementing) intelligence. Then I did research on computer vision because I thought it offered the perfect testbed for experimenting with computational intelligence theories. Finally, I switched to cognitive science because I came to believe that deciphering intelligence requires the devoted study of the computational aspects of the human mind. I'm fascinated by large scale dynamical neural networks and I hope they will help us discover many of the answers we're looking for.
Computational modeling of human visual recognition
Ersatz Brain Group
Modeling of visual recognition based on large scale integration of dynamical neural networks. High performance computing with MPI and C++ on an IBM 166-node linux cluster. Watch a few visualizations of a system that models several features of the human visual recognition process. Each of these simulations models about 1 billion neural synapses and requires about 100 CPU cores for several minutes.
Visual detection of urban and landscape changes
Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems – Computer Vision
Use of satellite imagery for the detection and evaluation of landscape and urban changes
Computational modeling of human visual depth perception
3D Shape Perception Lab
Bayesian modeling of visual depth perception for inference under limited cognitive resources
Computational modeling of human visual attention
Ersatz Brain Group
Modeling of popout phenomena in visual attention with a network of dynamical neural networks. Watch two visualizations of the network dynamics that model the Müller-Lyer illusion and the popout phenomena in visual attention
Content based image retrieval
Computational Vision and Robotics Laboratory
Development of a content based image retrieval system based on a multi-agent architecture
RoboCup
Computational Vision and Robotics Laboratory
Development of a robotic soccer platform including the mechanical, electronic, and software components. Watch the first stages of a prototype robot that was developed from scratch
Distance learning by video conference
Test and evaluation of video conference platforms for distance learning
Neural networks
Development of web-based Neural Network simulators for a distance learning course. Try the following NN web simulators; the code is 20 years old but still working (if your browser allows Java applets)
Gesture recognition
Development of a gesture recognition system for the translation of the Greek Sign Language. It uses a 5DT data glove interface and is trained with a neural network.
Projects
Some projects that I'm currently working on in my free time. They're quite small but filling
- VEDU ελληνικά video-μαθήματα ⇗
- Ταξιδιωτικός & Τουριστικός Οδηγός Κιλκίς ⇗
- Στατιστικά ελληνικών τμημάτων Πληροφορικής ⇗
A few projects that I voluntarily developed in the past (note: some of them have changed completely since then)