PROFESSOR YANNIS IOANNIDIS
Cooperation is the ‘magical key’ for progress

Authority in informatics says humanities have a greater role today than ever before in responsible technological advances

“Young people graduate from our universities with an excellent scientific background. They go abroad and they excel, and some come back. Ideally, I would like for all young Greek men and women who leave the country to broaden their horizons to come back. This country would be a paradise if they did,” says Athens University informatics professor Yannis Ioannidis. Having graduated from the National Technical University of Athens in 1982 and then pursued postgraduate studies at Harvard (1983) and Berkeley (1986) before embarking on a stellar career, he speaks from experience.

“Personally, I became more Greek in America. I am better than I would have been if I hadn’t left at all or if I’d left from the beginning. I came back after 15 years – four spent on postgraduate studies and 11 teaching – because everything that can be measured is usually better abroad, but those things that cannot be measured are better in Greece,” he adds.
As president of the Association for Computing Machinery, the biggest of its kind in the world, and as affiliate faculty of the Athena Research and Innovation Center, of which he was president for 10 years, not to mention having presided over numerous committees, councils and forums through the years, Ioannidis consistently ranks among the 2% of the world’s most influential scientists in his field.

Kathimerini met up with him in Athens recently as he returned from a conference in London on data and was preparing to leave for New York, where the ACM is headquartered, before coming back to Greece for an exam at Athens University and then working with the European OpenAIRE initiative for open science, in preparation for a major conference at CERN.
The ACM has been the environment in which he grew scientifically for 42 years. However, as he notes, his election to its presidency in 2022 was “the culmination of long-term preparation meeting opportunity.” He would not have been elected in the summer of 2024 to serve a second term as president of the 78-year-old organization – whose core value is excellence – had he not previously been president of the Athena Research Center, Greece’s national representative to the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) – where he now serves as a permanent expert – founder and head of OpenAIRE, and much more.

“I travel all over the world. It’s tiring, yes, but it’s also an extraordinary experience, especially in an era when computer science is at the center of attention, with artificial intelligence and quantum computing reaching unimaginable speeds. These advances bring enormous opportunities but also immense risks,” says Ioannidis.

“The ACM supports the exceptional scientists and professionals I meet wherever I go, while isolating those few who act unethically. It shapes and recommends policies for artificial intelligence to ensure it is used for positive purposes, to prevent the mistakes it can make and to prohibit its use as a lethal weapon, among other things. It informs policy makers and society about technological developments. It advocates for cross-disciplinary cooperation, which is a magical yet difficult key, as scientists tend to retreat into their silos. However, a lot of miracles happen in the space where different fields meet, where diverse scientific fabrics are woven together, as last year’s Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry showed, awarded to leading interdisciplinary computer scientists such as Demis Hassabis.”

Perpetual motion
A recipient of both international and national awards, Ioannidis has to his credit roughly 200 publications, four patents and more than 30 technological innovations, “some of which have found their way into systems we all use every day.” He has also provided technological guidance for the European EBRAINS infrastructure, which aims to create a digital twin of the human brain, and has coordinated dozens of research projects, among other achievements.
His team, comprising 80 scientists from the University of Athens, the Athena Research Center and international organizations, works across four main areas, he explains. “First, sustainability and solutions to address the climate crisis. Second, open science, because both scientists and society must know what we are doing in research. Third, health, through EBRAINS and other initiatives such as the former Human Brain Project. For example, we collect clinical data – without violating patient privacy – on neurodegenerative and certain other of the 8,000 rare diseases, from multiple hospitals. Because these diseases are rare and samples are limited, pooling them enables us to draw scientifically valid conclusions with statistical significance.”

Last but not least, the team works in a field that is particularly exciting to Ioannidis: interactive digital storytelling, “the transmission of information and knowledge through a narrative.”
“A museum visit is typically centered on the exhibits, where each object is accompanied by its own small story. We have reversed that approach, making the museum experience centered on a story: The exhibits emerge through a single overarching narrative, one with a thread, plot, characters, dialogue, and the possibility of interaction. Visitors can engage with it through their phone or tablet, enjoying the story by playing with or altering its flow,” he explains.
“It is a fusion of art and technology that enhances memory and deepens the user’s cognitive and emotional engagement. Our interdisciplinary team includes computer scientists, scriptwriters, illustrators, archaeologists, historians and others. We have completed more than 35 such productions for museums, archaeological sites and public spaces in Greece, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. These are projects that fascinate me, because they unite my love for technology with my passion for history and art.”

Challenges
Ioannidis argues that responsible technology requires the contribution of the humanitarian sciences now more than ever.
“Large language models cannot be developed without computational linguists, nor artificial intelligence without experts in history, literature, the arts, cognitive science, behavior, philosophy, law, ethics and economics. Quite suddenly, many fields within the humanities are gaining a new role, one that is not yet universally recognized, but is very much elevated and increasingly central,” he says.
And what is the biggest challenge? “Open science, an open mindset, the sharing of knowledge, and cooperation across disciplines,” he says. “But open science also means transparency in the scientific process, publicly laying out every stage of the work funded by taxpayers. Scientists in the field want to see whether they will reach the same conclusions when they apply what you describe. At times, however, there is neither transparency nor a sense of responsibility; data are manipulated, and as a result, even a few such negative cases can erode public trust in science as a whole. In most scientific fields, reproducibility – the ability to obtain the same results by following the methods described in a paper – is a key requirement. Yet this happens in only a much smaller proportion of studies than one would hope.” 

Big events and influences
The biggest defining event of his life was his family’s forced expulsion from Turkey. “I was born in Istanbul, and when they expelled us, in 1964, I was 5 years old. The story of the protagonist of ‘Politiki Kouzina’ is my story too,” he says, of the 2003 drama, titled “A Touch of Spice” in English. “My father, Hermes, was arrested on false charges and deported. My mother, Efi, had dual nationality and stayed behind with me and my sister Xanthippi, who was 30 days old at the time. She sold everything we had for pennies and we came to Greece, the holy grail for Greeks in Poli. It’s a legacy, with both positives and negatives, that has defined me and which I carry with great respect,” he says.

Influential figures in his life include his parents, colleagues, teachers and his family.
“I was influenced by my parents, who taught me to love knowledge; by classmates who were different from me; and by Timos Sellis at the NTUA, who became like a brother to me. We went to the US together for our master’s at Harvard, earned our doctorates at Berkeley, and became professors at different American universities. He returned to Greece before I did. I also learn from my academic children – every experience is a lesson. Among my teachers, one who deeply influenced me during high school, at the 8th Gymnasium of Patissia, was a theologian and philologist named Vassilis Assimomytis. He introduced us to the theater, staged plays with us as actors, took us to museums and to Mount Athos – he opened up an entirely new world before me. And then there was my doctoral adviser, Eugene Wong – he’s still alive and is now 91 years old. He taught me some very important principles: to listen to everyone, but then be ready to reject or forget everything that’s been said and develop my own idea, always holding myself to the highest personal standards. ‘Innovation outweighs erudition,’ he used to tell me. It’s important to know a lot, but even more important to create. And that’s what I strive to do…”