Theme: Gravity of Thoughts

The theme of TEDxUniversityofMacedonia 2016 is “Gravity of thoughts”. Gravity, this restraining force that applies to all of us, and thoughts that compose each individual’s unique and original personality. The combination which allows us to remain ourselves, while living in harmony with others.

Each thought has a distinct nature. A different perspective, a different background and a different complexion. With this distinct identity, it gains its own power, both for us and for the others. It is gravity, though, that regulates the environment, sets the context and creates the reasons due to which our thoughts perish and cease to exist, or blossom, develop and finally, materialize. This is how “gravity of thoughts” is born. Gravity is what influences us, makes us who we really are.

All of the above compose Gravity of Thoughts. TEDxUniversityofMacedonia 2016 intends to make you reconsider concepts taken for granted ‘til now. It triggers concern for ideas, which might made you immune ‘til now. And besides, wondering and questioning isn’t what declares a restless spirit?

NOESIS - Thessaloniki Science Center & Technology Museum
40°33'51.5"N 22°59'45.1"E
Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, 57001
Greece

Dromokrates

Summer in Heraklion. A group of friends is waiting for the ship. Suddenly, one of them begins playing some kind of rhythm on the guitar. Another one stands up and accompanies him with his body. Others follow suit. Without them being aware, people start gathering and their first improvisation is set up. What comes next is the forming of the team in Thessaloniki. Their field of activity are the city’s squares. The team, through improvisations during rehearsals, builds its first projects with the sole means of body and imagination. Our stimulants are personal stories and social issues, be it conformism, racism and the vanity of life. The team functions through mutual shaping of the choices and ideas of its members. Our goal is to get the public opinion to worry more and enable more individuals to acquaint with the magic of theater.

Gus G

Musician

Kostas Karamitroudis or else the well-known Gus G, is a musician, a guitarist and generally, one of the most important Greek artists on the planet. He is the guitarist of the living legend of rock and metal music Ozzy Osbourne and his personal band ‘Firewind’, with whom he has recorded 7 albums and already done 5 world tours, while the last years he is going on tour as a solo artist too. He is a person that disfavours quiescence and when he is not composing at the studio, he is always on the road, playing music for his fans.

MOYSA

MOUSA was created by Thessaloniki Concert Hall in March 2015 with the initiative of international pianist Georgios-Emmanouil Lazaridis and the founding grant from the Stauros Niarchos Foundation. Within less than 20 months of operation, MOYSA has managed to establish itself as one of the most serious efforts to create a common "musical home" for young Greek artists. It’s a community of young musicians from Northern Greece and other Greek regions, aged from 8 to 25 years old. It’s purpose is to educate members of the orchestal art and other related fields, as well as to strengthen their social awareness through the music. Thodoris Papadimitriou is the mentor and conductor of the orchestra.

The Manzins, ProDancers Studio

Manzins were formed in 2012 and are an experimental contemporary dance group. Their founder and coach is Antonia Pitoulidou. The team is built each year after an audition and the members are high-level individuals. The team started from The ProDancers Studio. The ProDancers Studio was established during the summer of 2012 by Kleri Karapidaki. The main idea is that all students or professional dancers can learn and teach the kind of dance they love in a place that inspires them and brings them together with the dance community. It constitutes the first dance studio in Greece to adopt the “drop in” lessons scheme, were technique and choreography are taught in an autonomous way over each lesson and the student can attend whichever lesson and whenever he pleases during the season, paying individually for each lesson.

Filothei Matsigkou

Career and Personal Development Coach

Filothei Matsigkou is a Career and Personal Development Coach at LeadCompass, a Career Counseling company that she co-founded. She specializes in young people’s development by using the methods of experiential learning, quantum teaching and the maieutic of Socratis. In her five year professional and volunteer experience in Greece, Romania and Ghana, she has created and organized dozens of personal and professional development programs for nearly 1000 young people. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Life Long Learning and Adult Education from the department of Education and Social Policy at University of Macedonia. Her mission is to unlock a powerful mindset to every young person so that they will lead their life with purpose and transition successfully from education to employment.

Georgia Kiziridou

Developmental – School Psychologist

Georgia Kiziridou is a Developmental – School Psychologist, MSc, from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Since 2007 she is the owner of a multi-disciplinary centre of Speech, Learning and Behavioral Disorders. Also, she is lecturer at the Mediterranean College of Thessaloniki and her main academic interests are Learning Difficulties, Assessment and Prevention – Health Promotion at schools. Since 2009, she is the co-founder of the company “Play-learning”. The aim of the company is the creation and the e-commerce of special educational tools for students with speech and learning difficulties. She is the creator of the psycho-educational game “Let’ s play with Emotions”. Also, she is a qualified adult instructor from the Ministry of Education.

Georgios Laskaris

Postdoctoral Research Associate of the Hadronic Physics group of MIT

George Laskaris is a member of Hadronic Physics Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US Massachusetts. Born in Athens and raised in Piraeus he studied Physics at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens and Duke University in North Carolina. His research interests are related to the study of nuclear power, in other words, the force that is responsible for the stability of the physical matter that exists around us. By performing experiments in accelerators in the US and in Europe, studying nuclear structure of light nuclei and the interaction of protons and neutrons inside heavier nuclei.

Konstantinos Giamalis

Digital Marketing Manager

Konstantinos Giamalis is from Larissa and he lives in Athens for the last 1.5 years. He has studied Business Administration and he works as a Digital Marketing Manager in e-FOOD, the most famous online delivery application in Greece. He is also the founder of the club “PROSFERO” ( “I OFFER”) with the aim of fighting against poverty in a national level. He has been awarded for his social action by Aggelopoulou foundation, while he has represented Greece in Clonton Global Iniative University 2013 in St. Louis( U.S.A.).

Nancy Kokolaki

Producer

Nancy, is a member of the cultural institution Bad Crowd. She is working as a producer of artistic projects, with more recently, the movie, ASHES with international debut at Montreal World Festival and the argentine-greek documentary WORKING DANCERS with a debut at the International Documentary Festival Thessaloniki 16’. Also, she is the producer of the interactive audiovisual installation PROJECT ATLAS, that has been presented at the Athens-Epidarus Festival, previous summer. Along with Nikos Moustakas, they established the Bad Crowd, envisioning an international network of artistis, aiming to create artworks and social artistic actions in all the world.

Panos Athanasopoulos

Professor of Psycholinguistics

Panos Athanasopoulos is the Director of the Perception and Learning Laboratory (PERLL) at Lancaster University, where he holds a Chair in Applied Linguistics. His research programmes seek to understand how people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds communicate and perceive the world around them, focusing on how we see colours and objects, and how we experience motion and time. Truly inter-disciplinary in nature, he has brought together theoretical insights and methodologies from Anthropology, Linguistics, Psychology, and Neuroscience to develop a novel framework for studying thought patterns in bilinguals, extending the linguistic/cultural relativity hypothesis (the idea that people with different cultural/linguistic backgrounds think and perceive the world differently) to the domain of second language learning.

Petros Martinidis

Lecturer, art and architecture critic, crime novels’ author and columnist

Born in Thessaloniki in 1946, with studies in Architecture (Thessaloniki), Psychology and Script Theory (Paris), History and Philosophy of Science (London), he teached in the Polytechnic School for 35 years and keeps doing so on other Schools’ master degree programmes. He’s authored a variety of articles and books in relation to his scientific fields and 10 crime novels, during the past 20 years.

Tania Oramas

Architect and researcher

Tania Oramas is a practitioner architect and researcher, co-founder of the international collective of architects ‘knitknot architecture’. Knitknot is established in 2013 by a group of architects, urban planners, artist and educators with the aim to explore new ways to approach the architectural practice in a more open and critical way. They defend that the aim of architecture goes beyond the built project, and different itineraries such as research, critical writing or development of projects that address social, cultural and economic issues is required to re-conceptualize the role of the architect as social agent.

Theodouli (Lia) Terzidou

Computer Science Teacher - Researcher of Intelligent Pedagogical Agents

Theodouli Terzidou is an IT educator and a candidate PhD student in multimedia laboratory at Information Technology department of AUTH. She is a graduate of applied IT of University of Economics of Athens having a Master degree in Information and Communication Technologies in Education of IT department of AUTH. The main objects of the research are the Intelligent Pedagogical Agents for Virtual Learning Environments, while in her research interests, Game Based Learning, Distance Learning, Computer Science Collaborative Learning, Human Communication Information are included. As a fan of the new technologies, she explores innovative methods aimed at learning in virtual environments with the help of visual agents

Vasileios Georgopoulos

Criminologist, Ethical hacker

Vasileios Georgopoulos is a graduate ethical Hacker, mechanical of safety and investigator of crimes about electronical crime. He is doing business, actively, at the domain of legal informatics and at the assurance of informatio, since 2013. He has been associated with important law offices and has taken part in investigations about the demystification and detection of crimes that had been committed with means or target the informative systems. His aim is to inform firms, individuals and students about the safe use of internet. Also, his goal and part of his postgraduate treatise, is dealing with the investigation about the right use of digital exhibits, during the judge of crimes, either juridical, neither corporative.

Vivien Cumming

Earth Scientist

Vivien is foremost an Earth scientist. Her postdoctoral research at Harvard and McGill Universities delved into questions deep in Earth’s history when climates were extreme and life was taking hold. Having spent the majority of her life exploring both remote and familiar corners of the planet, she has an extensive knowledge of the delicate intricacies of the natural world, and how they are intertwined with human lives. Viv now combines science, photography and writing to tell exciting stories about the planet; inspiring sustainability, conservation and an understanding of Earth processes.