Click to Enlarge
The Onassis Foundation scholar, Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos, Lecturer at the University of the Aegean, producer, director and creator of 3D films, was recently made a Knight of the Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. The ceremony was held on 25 June 2014 in the amphitheatre of the Academie Francaise in Athens, Greece. Olivier Descotes, director of the Academie Francaise in Greece, conferred the medal.
Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos is a qualified electrical engineer, having graduated from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). He went on to do his post-graduate studies at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1) (Master in Advance Studies in Cinema, Television and Audiovisual Media) and then did his Ph.D. in the Science of Art at the Paris X University.
He worked in France as a researcher at the National Institute of Audiovisual Media INA (Labo 2D, Labo 3D in the Research Directorate, IMAGINA) and as an instructor at the Paris 1 University. He was also an editor and then editor-in-chief of the journal Tech Images, editor-in-chief and coordinator of the video journal collection La vague, Arts en vidéos, for which he received an award from SCAM (Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia) in 1991. On his return to Greece in 1994, he worked as producer of 3D animation films primarily for the 2004 Olympic Games (producing an augmented reality tourist guide called Archeoguide, which received a Laval Virtual Award in 2002 and an IMAGINA Award in 2002, as well as a database on the temples of Ancient Olympia used in the Gedeon documentary, an interactive installation by Maurice Benayoun in the production ‘Athens 2004’, a multilingual DVD-ROM about the ancient Olympic Games).
Since 2010 Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos has been teaching in the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering of the University of the Aegean, and continues to collaborate with universities and research bodies in France. Two of this works can be seen in the virtual reality room at the Acropolis Museum. In 2014 he won an excellence scholarship sponsored by the City of Paris to allow him to do research at IRCAV, the Research Institute on Cinema and Audiovisual Media at Paris 3 University.
The Knight of the Ordres des Palmes académiques medal is conferred in France to honour figures whose work falls within the remit of the Ministry of Education, as well as foreign scientists in recognition of their contribution to promoting French culture and the French language abroad.
