Nikolaos (Nikos) Nikolaou

Academic CV



Education
2016 PhD in Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK
2012 MSc (Distinction) in Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning), University of Edinburgh, UK
2011 5-year Diploma in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece

2022-2023 Standalone PG Courses from MSc in Genomic Medicine, University of Exeter, UK
               • Fundamentals in Human Genetics and Genomics
               • Bioinformatics, Interpretation and Data Quality Assurance in Genome Analysis


Fellowships, Scholarships & Awards
2018 NVIDIA GPU Grant
2017 Best of Computing, Notable Article of 2016 (Selected by ACM)
2017 Steve Furber Medal (Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award), School of CS, University of Manchester, UK
2016 Carole Goble Medal (Best Doctoral Student Paper Award), School of CS, University of Manchester, UK
2016 EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship
2015 Best Poster Award, INIT/AERFAI Summer School on Machine Learning, Benicàssim, Spain
2012-2016 EPSRC Scholarship for PhD Studies in Computer Science CDT, University of Manchester, UK
2011-2012 PSAS Award for M.Sc. Studies in Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, UK


Research Experience
2022-now Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at UCL
2021-2022 Senior Data Scientist at AstraZeneca
2021-2022 Honorary Senior Research Fellow at UCL
2019-2021 Research Fellow at UCL-CSED
2018-2021 Senior Research Fellow at UCL
2018-2020 Visiting Researcher at the University of Manchester
2016-2018 EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow in the University of Manchester
2016 Research Associate in the EPSRC funded LAMBDA project
2012-2016 PhD in Machine Learning (Cost-Sensitive Boosting: A Unified Approach)


Teaching Experience
Module Lead
2022-now PHAS0077 - MSc Research Project for MSc in Scientific and Data Intensive Computing, UCL (PG)
2022-now Introduction to Machine Learning, UCL (annual 5-day intensive course for UCL P&A PhD & MSc students)

Teaching Assistant or Invited Lecturer
2019-2021 PHAS0068 - Physics of Exoplanets, UCL (UG)
2014-2016 COMP61011 - Foundations of Machine Learning, University of Manchester (PG)
2014-2016 COMP61021 - Modelling and Visualization of High-dimensional Data, University of Manchester (PG)
2014-2016 COMP24112 - Introduction to Machine Learning, University of Manchester (UG)
2013-2016 COMP26120 - Algorithms and Imperative Programming, University of Manchester (UG) [part-time]
2013-2016 COMP14112 - Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, University of Manchester (UG)


Administrative Roles
2024-now Director of Admissions, UCL's CDT in Data Intensive Science (CDT-DIS)
2022-now Director of Training, UCL's CDT in Data Intensive Science (CDT-DIS)
2022-now Deputy Director, MSc in Scientific and Data Intensive Computing, UCL


Student Supervision
(Co-)Supervised or currently (co-)supervising 7 PhD students, 26 MSc/MSci Students, 1 BSc student summer project & 3 industrial placement group projects involving 9 PhD students. See my Students page for a list.


Scientific Society Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society


Other Academic Activities
Reviewed > 50 papers for journal & conference articles for >20 prestigious international venues (listed below).

Journal Reviewer
  •  Pattern Analysis and Applications (PAAA), IEEE
  •  New Astronomy, Elsevier
  •  Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Springer
  •  Experimental Astronomy, Springer
  •  Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), IEEE
  •  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), Springer
  •  Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, Springer
  •  Machine Learning, Springer
  •  Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS), IEEE
  •  Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (ETCI), IEEE
  •  Neurocomputing, Elsevier

Conference Committees (Reviewer)
  •  S+SSPR (2024)
  •  IJCAI (2024; 2021)
  •  ECML (2024)
  •  PharML: Machine Learning for Pharma and Healthcare Applications (2020, 2022, 2023)
  •  LOD (2023)
  •  ICLR (2022)
  •  ELECTRIMACS (2019)
  •  AAAI (2019)
  •  ICPR (2018)
  •  ESANN (2015-2017)

Organizer
  •  Co-organizer, NeurIPS Data Challenge: “Extracting exoplanetary signals from the Ariel Space Telescope”, 2024
  •  Main Organizer, UCL MAPS I&E Workshop: "AI/ML for Medical Diagnosis & Treatment", 2024
  •  Co-organizer, ECML Discovery Challenge: “Inferring Physical Properties of Exoplanets From Next-Generation Telescopes”, 2023
  •  Co-organizer, NeurIPS Data Challenge: “Inferring Physical Properties of Exoplanets From Next-Generation Telescopes”, 2022
  •  Co-organizer, ECML Discovery Challenge: “2nd Ariel Mission Machine Learning Challenge: Correcting Transiting lightcurves of exoplanets from non-linear noise”, 2021
  •  PC Member, Conference: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (2021)
  •  PC Member, Workshop: "PharML: Machine Learning for Pharma and Healthcare Applications" (2020-2021)
  •  Main Organizer: ECML Discovery Challenge, “1st Ariel Mission Machine Learning Challenge: Correcting Transiting Exoplanet Light Curves for Stellar Spots",2019


Invited talks, Lectures & Conference presentations
More than 40 talks, delivered to audiences of various technical levels (from non-technical, to world-class expert) in fields ranging from machine learning & statistics to physics & pharmaceutics/biomedicine. Audience sizes ranging from ∼10 to ∼1000 participants. For a fairly outdated list see my Presentations page.


Languages
Greek (Native), English (Fluent),
Spanish (Proficient), French (Proficient),
Italian (Advanced), Mandarin (Elementary)