My research is on the area of Drug and Chemoinformatics and I am working under the supervision of Thomas Girke. We are focusing on developing methods and computational tools for the selection of compounds from combinatorial libraries and the prediction of their bioactivity based on structural and physicochemical properties for QSAR analysis.
High-throughput screening (HTS) is a method used in Drug Discovery and Chemical Genomics to assay a large number of compounds in order to identify bioactive compounds with respect to a particular biomolecular pathway. It is desirable to screen a selection of compounds that cover as much of the appropriate chemical space as possible, in order to increase the "hit" rate - the number of the bioactive compounds in the assay. Since the chemical space of all possible chemical compounds is extraordinarily large, most compound libraries available today represent only a part of it. Therefore, there is the need for selection of diverse compounds among all the available compounds that exist in the libraries. Moreover, if we could predict the bioactivity of the compounds in silico, the design of the screening libraries would be more effective and would save a lot of time and money.
The study of my research project is to develop new efficient methods for the selection of most diverse compounds from combinatorial libraries based on their structural and physicochemical properties. At the same time machine learning approaches will be applied in order to build a computational tool for the prediction of the compounds bioactivity using the above properties. These two approaches aim to facilitate the design of compound libraries for screening with higher hit rates.
Previous research interests include Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Databases, Signal Processing, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning Techniques, Web Applications and Interfaces, Electronic Government, Virtual Reality.
Below is a list of Research Projects that I have participated:
Research ProjectsHealth-e-Child
(January 2006 - September 2006) : The Health-e-Child project
aims at developing an integrated healthcare platform for European paediatrics, providing seamless
integration of traditional and emerging sources of biomedical information. The long-term goal
of the project is to provide uninhibited access to universal biomedical knowledge repositories
for personalized and preventive healthcare, large-scale information-based biomedical research
and training, and informed policy making.(Web address: http://www.health-e-child.org/)
Digitization and Presentation
of the History Museum of the University of Athens
(November 2004 - November 2005)
Project funded by Information Society. This project aims to the digitization
and web presentation of the exhibits, heirlooms and documents of the History
Museum of the University of Athens.
Greek - Italian Collaboration
(June 2002 - June 2004)
Participation in the project of Greek – Italian collaboration between
the National Observatory of Athens, the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research
(HCMR) and the CNR IBIMET (National Research Council - Institute of BioMeteorology
in Italy). In this project a web interactive application has been developed, providing
the ability to the user to select a point on the map of Greece, where
an oil spill accident has taken place, and to receive data about the satellites
that cover the specific geographical area, as well as about the oil spill
dispersion taking into consideration meteorological and oceanographically
data provided by POSEIDON system of HCMR. (Website: http://spin-pc.space.noa.gr)
ROSES: (Real-Time Ocean Service for Environment and Security)
ROSES project constitutes a part of GMES (Global
Monitoring for Environment and Security), that is a joint initiative of
ESA (European Space Agency) and the European Commission. The aim of the
project is to deliver an operational and autonomous European capacity
and services for global monitoring for marine environment and safety.
Its multiple services are related with oil spills and water quality monitoring
in the short term, as well as with marine primary production assessment
or sea level and climate monitoring in the long term. As part of the project,
a web interactive application was designed and implemented that by receiving
the recognition data of oil spills from satellite images, that are provided
by the cooperator of the project Telespazio (Italy), forecasts in real
time the dispersion of the oil spills, based on meteorological and oceanographically
data provided by POSEIDON system of Hellenic Centre for Marine Research.
The Hellenic Ministry of Mercantile Marine and the Civil Protection Authorities
are automatically informed about an oil spill occurrence via e-mail, while
at the same time the results are visualized and presented through a website
(http://roses.ncmr.gr, username: guest, password: trial). This implementation
is one of the first real time prediction systems of an oil spill dispersion
and simultaneous publication of the results in the Internet for direct
access by anyone interested.
SmartGov: A Governmental Knowledge-based Platform for Public Sector Online
Services
(February 2002 - January 2004)
SmartGov project was funded by the European Commission's Information Society Technologies
Programme (IST). The aim of the SmartGov project was to specify, develop,
deploy and evaluate a knowledge-based platform to assist public sector
employees to generate online transaction services by simplifying their
development, maintenance and integration with already installed IT systems.
The deployment of that platform was supported by new process models, including
process improvement methodologies, targeting the public sector as well
as an investigation of social aspects for public sector employees. This
platform was evaluated in two European countries (in one Ministry and
one Local Authority). After its completion, the project was awarded the
honorary title of the “Project of the Month” (http://europa.eu.int/information_society/programmes/egov_rd/
projects_of_moth_march04/text_en.htm). (Website: http://www.smartgov-project.org)
CB-Business: Cross-Border Business intermediation through electronic
seamless services
(April 2002- January 2003) .
The project was funded by the European Commission's Information Society
Technologies Programme (IST). CB-Business focused on the development of
an intermediation scheme that facilitates the access to services offered
by national and regional government (administration agencies) and business
(commercial and industrial chambers) service providers across the European
Union and Enlargement Countries through a single-stop service-mediary,
the CB-BUSINESS intermediation hub. (Website: http://www.cb-business.com)
Virtual Museums
(November 1999 - October 2001)
Virtual Museums Project was funded by General Secretariat for Research and Technology. The
purpose of this project was to create a virtual environment and the appropriate
management tools where visitors of the participating museums will be able
to view their exhibits either through Internet or locally. PHP programs
were developed for data insertion, selection and presentation, which connect
with a multimedia database and retrieve – according to users’
preferences – and build the corresponding HTML pages. The project
was successfully completed in 2001. (Website: http://museums.di.uoa.gr)
Development of Optical Character
Recognition system for handwritten characters
Participation in the project "Development of Optical Character
Recognition system for handwritten characters" (PAVE 96 –
partially funded by General Secretariat for Research and Technology) in
the framework of the undergraduate thesis, regarding the study of inalterable
descriptors of characteristics on the representation of characters, as
well as the growth and evaluation of various methods of classification