The Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) is the only research centre in Northern Greece and one of the largest in the country and was founded in 2000. It is a legal entity governed by private law with non-profit status, supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs.

Today CERTH has five research institutes covering various fields including: Energy, Environment, Industry, Mechatronics, Information & Communication, Transportation & Sustainable Mobility, Health, Agro-biotechnology, Smart farming, Safety & Security, as well as several cross-disciplinary scientific areas. Currently more than 800 people work at CERTH with the majority being researchers.

CERTH has received numerous awards and distinctions such as the European Descartes Prize, the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, Microsoft International Contest Prize, the Trading Agents Competition Award and many more and is listed among the Top-20 of the EU’s Research Centres with the highest participation in FP7 competitive research grants. CERTH has participated successfully in more than 1.000 competitive research projects (with a total budget exceeding 423m€ and involving more than 1.100 international partner organizations) financed by the European Union (EU), leading industries from USA, Japan and Europe and the Greek Government via the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT).

The Institute for Bio-Economy and Agri-Technology (IBO) is one of CERTH’s institutes. IBO was established in January 2006. The Institute’s main mission is to conduct applied and technological research that leads to new products and services with environmental, economic and social impact. IBO’s main focus is on the Agro-technology domain and more specific issues related to: precision agriculture, smart farming, Agro-logistics, automation, ICT, DSS, sensors, Agri-robotics, in-door production systems (constructions, microclimate), rational inputs use (use of renewable energy, and water, soil, and land resources prevention), and environmental footprint assessment and optimization of agricultural production systems IBO-Agrotech (Agricultural Engineering Lab) is the Biosystems Engineering lab of IBO active in field robotics, RFID and zigbee for robot localization and food traceability applications, robot task and motion planning, intelligent tracking and coordination for robotic systems.

Other areas of research include intelligent control, intelligent techniques development (machine learning, neural networks, and self-organizing systems), data fusion and intelligent sensors.

Project Coordinator and Leader of WP5 and WP8.