Nektarios Tavernarakis, a Research Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of FORTH-Hellas, and a Professor-elect at the Medical School of the University of Crete was awarded today the Grant Academic Excellence Prize of the Empeirikeion Foundation

For a second, consecutive, year research results from the Photonic Materials and Devices Laboratory of FORTH-IESL headed by Dr Stavros Pissadakis, is highlighted in the December issue of Optics & Photonics News. This annual technology review is published under the auspices of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and lists the most exciting and significant research findings that characterized the passing year in Optics and Photonics.

Researchers at the Institute of Computer Science (ICS) Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) received the First Award in the “Gesture Recognition Challenge” contest with their work titled “Giving a hand to Kinect”

Researchers of the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH (FORTH-ICS) were awarded with Honorable Mention for their work entitled: "Electronic Health Record: Luxury or Need?" The paper was presented in the 14th National Conference of Healthcare Management in Athens on 12-13 October 2012, organized by the Hellenic Association of Healthcare Management.

The Acropolis Museum and the Institute of Electronic Structure and Lasers (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) have been awarded the biennial Keck Award by the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) for their common project regarding “Laser rejuvenation of Caryatids opens to the public at the Acropolis Museum: A link between ancient and modern Greece”. The award was given jointly to the team of the Acropolis Museum / the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas and for their contribution “towards the promotion of public understanding and appreciation of the accomplishments of the conservation profession”. The ceremony took place on Friday 14th of September 2012, at the closing session of the biennial IIC congress in Vienna, which attracted 350 delegates.

Research at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, published today in the premier international scientific journal Nature, reveals a novel molecular mechanism that strongly and generally defends against necrotic cell death triggered by extreme temperature and multiple other insults.

The paper entitled "A Production Rule-Based Framework for Causal and Epistemic Reasoning", presented by researchers of the Institute of Computer Science (ICS) of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), received the Best Paper Award at the 6th International Symposium on Rules (RuleML'12, Montpellier, France, August 2012).

Panayiota Poirazi, a researcher in the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), was recently awarded the prestigious Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for her proposal entitled "Dissecting the role of dendrites in memory".

4 May 2012 – The longest deployment of the Zeppelin NT for climate research so far was officially launched today in a campaign coordinated by scientists from Julich. For a total of twenty weeks, the airship will fly across Europe to measure the composition of the air above the Netherlands, Italy, the Adriatric and finally, in 2013, Finland.