Education
Education is central to the mission of the Archimedes Research Unit. We connect learners across Greece with international research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science and Algorithms.
Through scholarships, research supervision, international exchanges, school programmes, competitions and open educational resources, we support learners at every stage from doctoral researchers and university students to lower- and upper-secondary school students.
Doctoral Researchers
Archimedes supports doctoral researchers through:
- Fully funded scholarships for fundamental and industry-oriented research.
- Access to supervision and mentorship from researchers in Greece and abroad.
- Funding for research visits at leading universities and research institutions.
- Travel support for presenting research at international conferences and workshops.
- Funding for participation in summer schools and advanced training programmes, helping researchers remain connected with recent developments in their fields.
Summer Schools for Doctoral Researchers
Archimedes co-organises international summer schools that offer doctoral researchers and other participants opportunities to deepen their knowledge, explore emerging research topics and connect with the wider research community. These include:
- Athens Natural Language Processing Summer School (AthNLP) : Co-organised by Archimedes in 2026, 2025, 2024, AthNLP provides training in NLP and machine learning. Its programme combines lectures, practical laboratory sessions and opportunities for participants to present and discuss their research, with topics including language models, machine translation and multimodal methods.
- Archimedes Summer School on Blockchain, Economics and AI 2025: Co-organised with the National Technical University of Athens, this school explored blockchain foundations, cryptography, game theory and economics, alongside AI. The programme included expert lectures, participant research talks and a practical blockchain hackathon.
- BioMed-AI Summer School 2025: Held in Lyon, France, this school brought together researchers and healthcare professionals to explore AI in biomedical research and healthcare, including the ethical questions surrounding its use. Archimedes was a co-organiser alongside the International Agency for Research on Cancer and other partners.
- European Summer School on AI (ESSAI) and Advanced Course on AI (ACAI) 2024: Co-organised by Archimedes and partner institutions, this two-week event at NCSR Demokritos in Athens offered 30 courses and 13 invited tutorials covering a broad range of current AI topics.
- 6th ACM Europe Summer School on Data Science (2025): Held in Ioannina from 30 June to 4 July 2025, the school combined lectures and practical exercises in data science, data management, deep learning and big data processing for early-career researchers, students and engineers. Nikos Mamoulis, affiliated with the University of Ioannina and Archimedes, Athena Research Center, served on its organising committee.
Master’s and Bachelor’s Students
Archimedes helps university students take their first steps in research through:
- Supervision and support for bachelor’s and master’s theses.
- Opportunities to work with Archimedes research teams on current scientific problems.
- Training in research methods, scientific communication and responsible AI.
- Mentorship that can help students develop strong thesis work into conference presentations or scientific publications.
- Internships, seminars and other opportunities to explore advanced study and research careers.
Mini-courses, Tutorials & Research Talks
- Mini-course / Tutorial — Data Privacy, Privacy-Preserving and Secure Computation (2024). Hosted at the Archimedes Amphitheatre and online on 13–14 May 2024, this two-day mini-course was led by Srini Devadas (MIT) and Katerina Sotiraki (Yale University and Archimedes). Sessions covered differential privacy, multi-party computation, fully homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, PAC privacy, adaptive data analysis, secure aggregated statistics and federated learning.
- Research talks — Archimedes AGT Afternoon Event (AAGTA) 2026. Held on 4 February 2026 with free online participation available, the event featured keynote talks by Paul Goldberg (University of Oxford) and Christos Papadimitriou (Columbia University and Archimedes), alongside presentations by Archimedes lead researchers. Topics included computational complexity, learning-augmented mechanism design, coordination mechanisms, fair division, scheduling and online auctions.
Hackathons & Shared Tasks
- Legal AI
- Hackathon — Athens Legal AI Hackathon 2025. Co-organised by Archimedes and legal professionals and academics from the Athens Legal Tech initiative, the event brought legal experts, Archimedes junior researchers and AI teams together at the Archimedes Amphitheatre. Participants worked on practical challenges involving the EU AI Act, a Greek legal chatbot for citizens, and multimodal analysis of recorded legal testimonials.
- AI for Finance & Misinformation Detection
- Shared task at a workshop — COLING 2025 Financial Misinformation Detection Shared Task. Presented within the FinNLP-FNP-LLMFinLegal workshop at COLING 2025, the task focused on identifying financial misinformation and generating explanations. Sophia Ananiadou, listed with affiliations to the University of Manchester and Archimedes, was among the shared task organisers.
Lower- and Upper-Secondary Education
Greek Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence
- Archimedes co-organizes the Greek Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (PDTN), an annual competition for lower- and upper-secondary school students. The four highest-performing students represent Greece at the European Olympiad in AI (EOAI) and the International Olympiad in AI (IOAI).
- The Olympiad introduces students to machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing and other areas of AI. Through its selection and training process, four students are chosen to represent Greece in international AI competitions.
- Greek students have achieved significant international distinctions:
- EOAI 2026: Two bronze medals.
- IOAI 2026: Two silver medals and two bronze medals.
- IOAI 2025: Two silver medals and one bronze medal.
Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge
- Co-organised by Archimedes in 2026, 2025 and 2024, the Bebras Challenge invites schoolchildren to explore computer science through fun logic problems.
Artificial Intelligence in Schools
During the 2025–2026 and 2026–2027 academic years, members of Archimedes have offered AI courses for school students.
These courses help students:
- Understand the fundamental ideas behind AI.
- Gain practical experience with machine learning tools.
- Design and build their own AI projects.
- Work under the guidance of Archimedes researchers and educators.
- Discover possible pathways towards further study in AI and computer science.
The programme has been offered at Greek schools, including the Leonteios School of Nea Smyrni in Athens.
Leonteios School of Nea Smyrni received the AI in Education Excellence 2025 award at Infocom 2025. The award recognised the school’s approach to AI education, including its collaboration with Archimedes and Demokritos, the integration of AI into the curriculum, and support for teacher training.
Summer Schools for Lower- and Upper-Secondary Students
One-week summer schools led by Professor Constantinos Caramanis were held in 2026 and 2025. Through lessons and practical activities, students explored fundamental AI concepts and developed their own projects with the support of experienced instructors.
Open Online Courses
Professor Constantinos Caramanis also offers free Greek-language educational material on YouTube. The available series cover:
These resources make essential AI knowledge accessible to students, educators and members of the wider public throughout Greece.
