Yiannis Laouris
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Yiannis Laouris supervises the project and serves as Project Director. He is Chair of the Board of Future Worlds Center and Executive Board Member of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras. Yiannis has been the founder of many organizations including CYBER KIDS, Ekkotek High-tech business incubator, Technology for Peace, Cyprus Society for Systemic Studies. He currently serves as Acting Dean for the N.E.T.S. Mediterranean Graduate School of Applied Social Cognition and as Head of the Futures design Unit of Future Worlds Center.
Yiannis served as invited Expert of the Core Foresight 2050, think tank groups created by the Digital Futures Task Force of the European Commission to anticipate global changes on the planet and to advice the EC on how ICT could facilitate shape those futures by 2050. As member of the The Onlife Initiative, together with 11 other philosophers and natural scientists he co-autghored the Onlife Manifesto, which
- Member of the Wisdom Research Network of the University of Chicago[1].
- Represents Cyprus as Delegate of the Cybercrime Initiative launched by the Commonwealth in 2011.
He has served in the past or continues to serve:
- As National Representative and/or Expert in many European Research Networks
- COST 276: Knowledge Management (Invited Expert 2005-2006)
- COST 219ter Accessibility for all to services and terminals for next generation mobile networks (National Representative 2005-2007)
- COST 298: Participation in the Broadband society (Invited Expert 2007-2008)
- COST 2102: Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication (National Representative 2008-2011)
- Insafe (Member of the Steering Committee 2006-present and Member of the Advisory Board 2010-2012)
- EU Kids Online (National Representative 2008-Present).
He was appointed as Local Representative for a number of American-based Organizations such a:
- Institute of World Affairs (Director for Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East 1999-2003)
- HasNa Inc. (Project Director 2002-2008).
He was/is Director for many European Program Consortia, including:
Role in Tech4Peace project
Founding member of the Technology for Peace project, together with Harry Anastasiou, Dervis Besimler, Bekir Azgin and Hrach Gregorian.
CYBER KIDS
CYBER KIDS was a nation-wide experiment launched in 1992 in Cyprus by Yiannis Laouris, George Vakanas and Maria Symeonides with the vision that introducing advanced computer technology in the lives of a critical number of young children using an educationally relevant and socially responsible, peace-enhancing curriculum would allow them to “transcend” the country’s educational and political life and move the new generation a decade ahead. By 1999, the number of children who benefited from their curriculum exceeded 15,000, which is approximately equal to 20% of the country’s youth population (ages 6-15). During the same period, the organization trained and employed 186 young and talented university graduates, thus combating brain drain while simultaneously spreading the CYBER KIDS Philosophy and knowledge to many more spheres of social life.
Books
Yiannis authored Masks of Demons, a book that exposes stereotypes between so-called "'lifelong"' enemies.
Awards
Yiannis received numerous honors and awards throughout the years[2], the most notable being:
- Summa cum laude for his PhD (1985)
- Provost's Teaching Award and Medical Innovation Award for innovation in university teaching (1991/92)
- First Award for Innovation and Creativity by the Employers and Industrialists Federation for CYBER KIDS curriculum (1998)
- The Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies Award for contributions in systems science (2008)
- Honorable Mention of the Anna Lindh Award to Future Worlds Center for promoting intercultural dialogue freedom and citizenship (2011)
A complete list of awards is available here.
Key publications
Yiannis has over 50 peered reviewed papers in experimental neuroscience, neuropsychology, neuro-education, collective wisdom and structured dialogue and over 150 conference presentations.
The full list is available here.