Professor Foto N. Afrati is a Distinguished Faculty Member at the National Technical University of Athens, specifically within the School of Electrical and Computing Engineering and the Division of Communication, Electronic and Information Engineering. She has held this position since 1993, following previous academic ranks at the same university as Associate Professor (1989-1993), Assistant Professor (1985-1989), Lecturer (1982-1985), and Research Fellow (1980-1982). She completed her PhD in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College of the University of London in March 1980, with a dissertation focused on Error Correcting Codes by Algorithms. Her academic journey also included a Diploma from Imperial College (March 1980) and an earlier Diploma in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (June 1976). Professor Afrati's research interests span several critical areas in computer science: Parallel and distributed computation Processing of very large data (including MapReduce) Data and web mining Database Systems Information integration Query optimization Computation and complexity of algorithms Approximation algorithms Her most recent publications demonstrate expertise in MapReduce environments, query optimization with views, and data exchange frameworks. These works are published in prestigious venues like EDBT, VLDB, PODS, and ICDT, with specific focus areas including adaptive sampling techniques, data source integrity, and algorithm complexity in database environments. Professor Afrati has received significant recognition in her field, including Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2009 She has advised numerous PhD students throughout her career, including Theodoros Mitakos, Ezz Hattab, Nikos Kiourtis, and Angelos Vasilakopoulos. Her current PhD students include Victor Kyritsis and Nikos Stassinopoulos. Professor Afrati maintains strong professional networks through her various visiting positions at institutions such as Google, Stanford University, IBM Research Center, University of Helsinki, University of Paris, DIMACS, and others. She has served as associate editor and reviewer for major academic journals and conferences including IEEE TKDE, ACM Transactions of Database Systems (TODS), Journal of ACM (JACM), and Theoretical Computer Science (TCS). Her extensive work in research projects spans both national and international initiatives, with funding from sources including the European Union's Thalis project, ESPRIT working groups, HCM networks, and Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology grants.
