ATHENA Research and Innovation Center

Overview

The mission of Athena RC is to conduct outstanding research in Informatics and Computational Sciences with substantial social impact, addressing both global challenges and local needs. Athena RC explores a broad spectrum of research areas within the ICT field, as well as topics raised by other scientific fields, industry needs, or societal challenges. Athena RC covers the research and innovation lifecycle end-to-end, commencing from basic and applied research, moving on to system and product prototyping and infrastructure service provision, and wrapping up with technology-transfer and entrepreneurship-enabling initiatives. In a nutshell, Athena RC aspires to create new knowledge and conceive ground-breaking solutions and technologies for the digital era. Its competitive advantage lies in the unique amalgama of skills and know-how of both its research and scientific staff that has already earned it national and international reputation and acclaim.

Further to research, innovation is also a fundamental pillar of Athena RC’s mission. Its several Research Institutes, Units, Spin-off companies and particularly its dedicated innovation-support Unit (Corallia) create a fertile technological innovation ecosystem and intensify systematic efforts to bring to market research and technological results.

In particular, Corallia is a multi-Cluster facilitator, incubator and youth entrepreneurship accelerator. It coordinates 3 innovation clusters with more than 170 members: the gi-Cluster (gaming & creative technologies & applications cluster), the mi-Cluster (microelectronics-based systems & IOT applications cluster) and the si-Cluster (space technologies & applications cluster), and is awarded with the Gold Label of Cluster Management Excellence; it operates 2 thematic Business Innovation Centres (BICs): the α2-innohub in Athens and the π1-innohub in Patras that have been awarded with the EBN EU|BIC certificate for quality business support; and implements a series of initiatives to stimulate youth entrepreneurship with partners and donors: the most prominent Accelerator in Greece the egg in cooperation with Eurobank, the Educational Trip in cooperation with student associations at highly acknowledged universities worldwide, Hackathons, Career Days, Internships Days, Networking Days, etc.

Athena RC has presence in three cities across Greece (Athens, Patras and Xanthi), has been awarded with an ISO 9001:2015 certificate by TUV NORD CERT for the management programmes, measures and actions as final beneficiary of Operational Programmes, the design and maturing of programmes and projects, the schedule, implementation, monitoring, control and validation of project deliverables and the management of State Aid Programmes and is an actor in and partner of the regional plans conducted by political, academic, economic and societal entities. Digital technologies.