Theme: LEAP

Everything is possible in humans when they realize their ability to overcome!

St. George's Bastion
Medieval Town
Rhodes, Notio Aigaio, 85100
Greece

Achilleas Gravanis

Professor of Pharmacology

Achilleas Gravanis, Professor of Pharmacology, Medical School of the University of Crete and Research Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology ITE. Member of the EU Biomedical Research Program Committee, Council of the Higher Education Quality Assurance Authority (ADIP), President of the Sectoral Scientific Council of Life Sciences - National Research & Technology Council (ESET) and the Scientific Council of the Hellenic Research & Innovation Foundation (ELIDEK). Associate Research Professor at the Center for Drug Development, Northeastern University, Boston. Vice President of the Board of Directors of Athens LifeTech Park. Co-founder of biotech companies Bionature & ReNeuroCell. His research group develops new synthetic compounds with neuroprotective & neuroregenerative properties with applications treating neurodegenerative diseases, 3D biomaterial scaffold technologies that host neural stem cells for the development of neuroimplants treating spinal cord injury & paralysis.

Amalia Konstantakopoulou

Social Entrepreneur

Amalia Konstantakopoulou is Co-founder of The Tipping Point, the largest mentoring organization in Greece for thousands of students and educators. TP's mission is to empower thousands of students in areas beset with high unemployment or isolated islands and villages to connect with professional and academic role models out of an extended network on a daily basis. Through a structured Digital Dialogue, live or asynchronous, students become more conscious about their life decisions and build their academic and career plans with the help of mentors. Amalia has studied Economics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, is a postgraduate student of the National Technical University of Athens (MBA) and an alumna of the IVLP program of the US State Department. She has worked in the fields of communication and marketing for companies and organizations internationally, as well as a Fashion Week communications consultant, in collaboration with Greek and foreign designers.

Anthi Maria Palla

Architectural Designer, Mobility Advocate

Anthi-Maria is an Interior Architectural Designer. Her Master's degree and passion for Events & Design led her to pursue a career as Event Coordinator at 'Happily Ever After Weddings in Lindos', for which she was awarded 'Best Wedding Planning Company of the Year' for Greece from Luxury Travel Guide in 2019, ' Best Wedding Planning Company' from International Wedding Awards for both 2019 and 2020 and 'Best Bespoke Destination Wedding Planner' from Lux Life Magazine in 2020. A motivational speaker and a YouTuber, Anthi-Maria and her husband created the YouTube channel 'Rolling Ever After with Nick & Anthi', after Nick sustained a Cervical Spinal Cord Injury in 2019, to raise awareness about Interabled couples and quadriplegia and help others. She is a Tedx 2021 speaker, the Greek Ambassador for the international women support group WAGS of SCI (Wives and Girlfriends of Spinal Cord Injury) and Ambassador for the Greek Association for People with Mobility Problems and Friends "Perpato".

Efthymios Lekkas

Professor of Dynamic Tectonic Applied Geology & Disaster Management

Proffesor Lekkas, teaches the subjects of Tectonics, Structural Geology, Geological Mapping, Earth mass-movements, Microtectonics, Environmental Geology, Seismotectonics, Disaster Management, Tectonics, Remote Sensing, Land Use, Environmental Management at graduate and post-graduate level. Author and publisher of 12 scientific books and handnotes. The books entitled "Natural and Technological Disaster" and “Geology and Environment” are unique in Greece and taught in seven Academic Institutions. Awarded by the Academy of Athens in 1989 for the scientific work "Geodynamic evolution of the Koziakas mountain range and the incorporation of the West Thessaly Unit in the formation of Tethys". Scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation and the Academy of Athens.

Lena Divani

Writer - Academic

Lena Divani is a writer and - until 2022 when she resigned for reasons of protest - a Professor at the Law Department of the University of Athens, where she taught 20th century Greek and Balkan history of foreign policy. She published several monographs and series of articles on issues of nationalism, minorities and territorial rivalries. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard University, King's College London and at the League of Nations Archive (UN) in Geneva. She is a founding member of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights. She entered the world of letters in 1994 with the collection of short stories "Why don't you talk about me" and won the MARA RALLI debut author prize. She published several novels, short story collections and children's books translated into several languages and adapted for television. Her latest book WORKING BOY was chosen to represent Greece for the READERS FOR EUROPE initiative by the library of the European Union.

Lukas Karytinos

Orchestra Conductor

Loukas Karytinos was born in Athens, where he studied Music and Law at the Athens Conservatory and the University of Athens. He studied conducting at the Berlin University of the Arts and worked in Germany until 1985, the year he took up the position of regular principal musician at the National Opera, of which he became Music Director in 1992 and from 1999 to 2005 was its Art Director. He has collaborated as principal musician with symphony orchestras and opera theaters around the world. He is considered by international critics as one of the best interpreters of Italian opera. Among his many distinctions, he has been honored for his 'excellent service to the field of music', by the President of the Italian Republic with the title of "Commendatore dell' Ordine della Solidarieta' Italiana". Currently, Loukas Karytinos is the Art Director of the State Orchestra of Athens and a professor at the Athens and Alpha Conservatories.

Makis Provatas

Author - Journalist

Born in Athens. Studied pre-med at Worcester St. College in Massachusetts and proceeded to graduate from the Dentist school of Thessalonica. Since 1999 he hosts a daily radio show at Athens Voice Radio. Since 2010 he has presented in a series of conversations over 350 important personalities from Greece and around the world, such as Stephen Hawking, Dario Fo, Noam Chomsky, John Cleese, Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Galeano, Isabel Allende, Patti Smith, John Malkovich, Mikhail Baryshnikov among others. He has co-authored two books: “Third Rock from the Sun” with physicist Dimitris Nanopoulos and “Only a few kilometers.. Stories for History” with historian Maria Efthymiou.

Nikos Kontou

Paralympic Athlete

Nikos Kontou had everything going for him, until he sustained a Cervical Spinal Cord Injury in 2019 on his wedding day. Since then, him and his wife, Anthi Maria Palla, have dedicated her lives to raise awareness about interabled couples and quadriplegia and to champion mobility across tourist destinations the world over. He is also a competing Paralympic athlete who has scored many medals for Greece.

Stamatios Krimigis

Astronomer

Academy of Athens vice-president Stamatios Krimizis is the Principal Investigator on several NASA space missions, including Voyagers 1 & 2, and is the only one in the world who has built instruments that have explored all nine classical planets. In 1999 the International Astronomical Union renamed asteroid 1979 UH 8323 Krimigis in his honor. He has written two books in Greek, "Journey to the Solar System - From Mercury to Pluto in 50 years" (2017), and "All in a Lifetime-From the Sun to the Galaxy" (2020), and served as President of the Scientific Committee (SPC) for the organization of the World Space Science Congress (COSPAR Athens2022) which met July 16-25, 2022 for the first time in Greece with approximately 2,700 scientists from dozens of countries. His biography can be found on the website of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, where he was honored with the Trophy for Lifetime Achievement 2015.

Thanasis Alevras

Actor

Thanasis Alevras was born, raised and completed his studies in Ioannina in June 1979. He moved to Athens to fulfill his big dream, theatre. He graduated from the Karolos Koun Art Theater in 2000 and since then has been working in theater and television recounting many meetings with many very special and spiritual people. He often says about his experience "Theater is like traveling on the Trans-Siberian getting to know the whole world."