--   Interview with Vasileios Stamatis   --

S: Tell us a bit about your background.

V: I am from Greece and I studied mathematics at the University of Ioannina in Greece. After my graduation, I moved to Glasgow where I started the MSc course Data Analytics at the university of Strathclyde. Directly after my master, I worked for a bit at a company in Switzerland as an engineer, but soon I understood that my interest focuses more on research. So I returned to Glasgow where I worked on research for a year at the University of Strathclyde. Finally, I found the DoSSIER project and applied and hired for the project federated innovation search.

S: How did you find out about DoSSIER and what made you decide to apply?

V: I found about DoSSIER on LinkedIn. As I had experience in IR research in conjunction with the big network of DoSSIER and the collaboration between all these universities make DoSSIER the perfect match for my career so I decided to apply for it.

S: How long are you already working on the project?

V: I started working on the DoSSIER project at the International Hellenic University on March/2020, so I’ve been working in the DoSSIER project for a year now.

S: What project are you currently working on?

V: I am working at project 2 Applied Federated Innovation Search at the International Hellenic University in Thessaloniki, Greece. My interest is in finding ways to improve patent retrieval performance.

S: What are your initial thoughts on DoSSIER and your experience?

V: DoSSIER is a unique opportunity. There is a really big network, 15 PhD Students, collaboration between universities, industry involvement, placements, enough budget for traveling and participating in conferences. All these prove the quality of the project.

S: Tell us about your team environment. What do you enjoy about collaborating with your small team and the larger lab?

V: In the International Hellenic University, we have a great team consisting of academic staff and students. Due to covid restrictions, we mainly working from home and having our meetings on zoom. Similarly, on DoSSIER, we communicate virtually but we still help each other and we plan on collaborative projects.

S: What excites you the most about the field of IR and HCI?

V: As my master’s is in data analytics what excites me most is working with data and AI. IR involves a lot of data and as we are moving towards to digitalization, data will be even more. I believe that AI is the tool to unlock the power of the data. So I am trying to find new methods in patent IR involving AI methods. 

S: Walk us through a day in the life of a DoSSIER PhD student.

V: I am starting working at 9 am. I am preparing the day’s work,  checking my emails, and other “things to do”. I start with the “admin” work like prepare what I will do, reply emails and finish any work left from the previous day. Then I am doing the reading, literature review, etc. and after that, there are many times meetings. I am having my lunch at 2 pm. Usually, the afternoons are for tutorials, coding, and engineering tasks.