Dr. Vangelis Karkaletsis is Director and Chairman of the Board of the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (NCSR Demokritos), Greece’s largest multidisciplinary research centre. He represents Greece at the European Artificial Intelligence Board and serves on the High-Level Advisory Committee on AI to the Greek Prime Minister, as well as on the National Commission for Bioethics & Technoethics.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Karkaletsis has worked to advance artificial intelligence from an isolated research field into a collaborative driver of innovation across science, industry, and society. Formerly Head of the Software & Knowledge Engineering Lab (SKEL | The AI Lab) and Director of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications at NCSR Demokritos, he has coordinated numerous European and national R&D projects and led major educational initiatives, including two of Greece’s first MSc programmes in Data Science and AI.

His work focuses on trustworthy, human-centric AI and its role in shaping Europe’s technological future. He contributes to national and European AI strategy through flagship initiatives such as PHAROS, the Greek AI Factory within the EU AI Factories network, and Greece’s Blueprint for AI Transformation. His research interests include natural language processing, knowledge representation, and human-machine interaction.