Thessaloniki, Thursday, November 19th, 2020

In the overall context of strengthening the extroversion of the University of Macedonia and its connection with important international research institutions,the Department of Applied Informatics organized last week an event with the leading biopharmaceutical company Pfizer to present its important recent actions, among which is the recent development of the vaccine against the coronavirus.

The main aim of the online event which was held in English, was to inform the students of the Department, but also the entire University community about the new Digital & Technology Hub of Pfizer in Thessaloniki.

The event which was coordinated by assistant professor Konstantinos Fouskas with the active participation of many faculty members of the Department as well as more than 130 students focused mainly on two sub-objectives: to familiarize the participants with future plans of the company in relation to the specific node, but also to get acquainted with gifted students, specialized in various research areas of Applied Informatics, in an effort to recruit in the near future the specific Digital and Technological with notable professionals in the field.

On behalf of the company students were addressed by Nico Gariboldi (Site Leader), Angeliki Iliopoulou (HR Manager) and Dimitris Papakonstantinou (Finance Partner), followed by an Q/A and a discussion session to cover many questions from students and faculty members.

With reference to the initiative, the Dean of the School of Applied Information Sciences and Head of the Applied Informatics Dpt., Professor Alexandros Chatzigeorgiou, noted that: "As Head of the Department of Applied Informatics, I would like to thank all members of the Pfizer company for kindly accepting our invitation and for organizing today's presentation. In fact, following the great success of this event, both in terms of number of participants and in terms of shared information, we are gladly looking forward to the development of further partnerships with the company. These could include student internships, co-supervision of diplomas and diploma theses, joint submission of and collaboration in research programs, lectures, etc. "I would like to take this opportunity to mention," Professor Chatzigeorgiou underlined, "that the Department's goal is not to limit the links with the company merely to the level of opportunistic actions, but to be able to effectively utilize its know-how on a more permanent basis.". With this in mind we have invited Pfizer to participate in the newly established "Industrial Advisory Board" of the Department of Applied Informatics, an invitation which we hope will be accepted ".

On his behalf, Pfizer Site Leader Nico Gariboldi stated: "The event, which was jointly organized with the University of Macedonia was excellent and I was really impressed by the professionalism of the organization, as well as the participation of the public and the high quality of inquiries we received. I consider this a great way to start our collaboration with one of the most important Universities in Greece, specifically one of the most advanced Departments in (Informatics) Computer Science. I am sure that we will find various valuable projects that we could further develop in the field of healthcare while aiming to innovate and improve patients' lives".