Alkiviadis Akritas

Alkiviadis (Alkis) Akritas finished Newark Senior High School (Newark, Delaware, USA) in 1966 and his undergraduate studies in the University of Athens, Department of Mathematics, in 1970. He did graduate work at the Universities of Southampton (England), Heidelberg and Kaiserslautern (Germany), Wisconsin-Madison and North Carolina State, USA and received from the latter his Ph.D. in Operations Research / Computer Science in 1978.

For 20 years Professor Akritas taught in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, USA. In the spring of 1987 he taught at the Department of Computer Science of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, on a grant of the United Nations TOKTEN Program (Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals), whereas in the spring of 1990 he taught at the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics of the Moscow State University (Lomonossof), Russia, on a grant of the Fulbright Foundation. Since 2001 he has been teaching in the Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, of the University of the Thessaly, in Volos, Greece.

Dr. Akritas is an editor of, and referees for, various scientific journals; he is also a member of the Organizing Committees of several conferences. His current research interests are in Symbolic and Algebraic Computations and in applying Computer Algebra Systems for improving the teaching of Mathematics. He has developed the fastest methods for isolating the real roots of polynomial equations with integer coefficients, and these methods have been incorporated in the Computer Algebra Systems Maple and Mathematica.

In 1989 Dr. Akritas published the book Elements of Computer Algebra with Applications. John Wiley Interscience, New York. This was the first textbook in the area of Symbolic and Algebraic Computations and was subsequently translated in Russian (Moscow, Mir Publishers, 1994).

He has published numerous papers and participated in the organization of several international conferences. In 2002 he organized the 8^th International Conference of Applications of Computer Algebra (ACA 2002) in Volos, Greece and was one of the (two) editors of the proceedings volume that was published. He has supervised 4 Ph.D. Theses and many Masters dissertations. His research has been funded by various foundations such as NSF, United Nations, Fulbright, University of Kansas.

He is fluent in English, German and Russian and can read scientific journals in French. Since 2000 he resides with his family in Neai Pagasai, Volos