Prof. Panayiotis Alefragis has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering and the design of optimization algorithms for very large scale problems in various application areas. He holds a Diploma (1995) and a PhD(2000) in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of Patras. His research interests include software engineering, high performance and cloud computing, programming langu­a­ges and compilers, resource scheduling algorithms, integer and combinatorial optimization, mobile and embedded applications and energy markets. He has co-authored over 60 articles in refereed scientific journals & conference proceedings and he has extensive practical experience by participating in various national and international research projects in the above areas. Prof. Alefragis was one of the founders and the Managing Director of Lyseis Ltd, a specialized software company for optimization software for the airline industry, with clients including, among others, Lufthansa AG and AIMS. He is currently assistant professor at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Peloponnese.