Dr. Marinos Ioannides is since the 1st of January 2013 the chair of the newly established and unique Digital Heritage lab of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in Limassol. The lab is the fastest growing research group on the island and has been awarded a number of EU projects within its three years debut (total budget for CUT: 2.95 MEuro). Previously, he worked at the Computer Department of the Higher Technical Institute in Nicosia (1994-2011).
After receiving his MSc in Computer Science at the University of Stuttgart, Germany where his thesis was undertaken at the Hewlett Packard European Headquarters in the area of safety and security of Multiuser and Multitasking Database and Digital Library systems, he received a fellowship from the University of Stuttgart in the faculty of Mechanical Engineering where he participated in 42 European Community projects as well as in 12 research projects funded by the German Research Foundation, the German Federal Ministry for Research and the Federal State of Baden Württemberg with a budget of more than 22 Million DM). For his PhD, he specialized in 3D Reconstruction from Digitized Data in different Computer Integrated Manufacturing Applications (CIM). His research team has been massively supported by IBM Europe with the most efficient hardware and software from 1988-1994. The final version of his 3D-Reconstruction engine was developed in cooperation with IBM Germany and is available and running in more than 142 research centers around the world. IBM Germany has promoted and presented his results in several conferences and exhibitions in the EU (such as the biggest ICT exhibition in the world -CEBIT 1993 and CEBIT 1994).
As one of the first non-European young researchers to be financially supported for his achievements by the European Commission, Marinos has received in 1994 the prestigious EU KIT SurfMod award for his work on 3D reconstruction in the areas of Archaeology, Medicine and Engineering (the EU KIT Prize has been awarded only 36 times worldwide from the EC DG RTD). In 2010 he was awarded from the Spanish and European Association of Virtual Archeology the prestigious Tartessos prize for his achievements in the area of 3D-documentation in Cultural Heritage. Ioannides has been invited as a Keynote Speaker in more than 72 conferences/events in the area of Digital Cultural Heritage in the last 13 years.
Ioannides is the Chair of the Bi-annual conference on Digital Heritage with more than 500 participants from all over the world. The EuroMed proceedings belong to the bestselling e-books of Springer-Nature Publisher with more than 650.000 sold copies since November 2006.
Dr. Ioannides is the coordinator of two leading EU projects in the area of Digital Heritage: 1) The Marie Curie Initial Training Action on Digital Heritage (www.itn-dch.eu) and 2) the H2020 CSA project on Virtual Multimodal Museums (www.vi-mm.eu).
Ioannides is since 2007 an active member of the EU Digital Library Europeana Network as well as representing Cyprus in the European Commission Group of Experts of the Digitization and Preservation of Cultural Heritage.