Georgios J. Fakas

Georgios J. Fakas is an Associate Professor (Docent) in the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden, where he leads the Uppsala DataBase Laboratory (UDBL). He has held academic positions at prestigious institutions including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, EPFL, UMIST, University of Cyprus, and Manchester Metropolitan University, where he served as a Senior Lecturer.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computation, UMIST, Manchester, UK (1998)
• M.Phil. in Computation, UMIST, Manchester, UK (1996)
• B.Sc. in Computation, UMIST, Manchester, UK (1995)

His research spans big data, keyword search on structured and graph data, spatial databases, web and geo-social search, workflow management, and data summarization. He also explores applications in educational technologies, distance learning, and health informatics. His work emphasizes efficient, user-centric data access and intelligent querying paradigms.

The 15 most recent publications highlight a sustained focus on keyword search, object summarization, spatial and semantic data, and ranking, published in top venues like SIGMOD, VLDBJ, IEEE TKDE, and PVLDB. His work integrates algorithmic innovation with practical database applications.

Scientific Awards:

• International Sabbaticals grant from Teknat (2023), hosted by Boston University
• Fellowship 'Hosting of Experienced Researchers from Abroad' from RPF, Cyprus (2009)
• ERCIM Fellowship (2001), hosted by EPFL, Switzerland

He is actively involved in PhD supervision and grant leadership. He currently serves as Principal Investigator for an eSSENCE-funded project on Data-intensive analytics for discovering critical minerals using Machine Learning, in collaboration with industry partners. He has supervised multiple PhD students to completion, including Georgios Kalamatianos, Khalid Mahmood, Zhi Cai, and Ben Cawley. He is a frequent reviewer for leading journals and serves on program committees of major conferences such as ACM SIGMOD and PVLDB.

He leads the Uppsala DataBase Laboratory (UDBL), a research group focused on advanced data management systems, where he mentors students and drives innovation in database technologies.