Yiannis Kostopoulos was born in Athens in 1972. He has over twenty years of experience in the design and management of IT projects in both the private and public sectors, as well as in projects funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program (FP7) and the Horizon 2020 program. His work has primarily focused on projects in the fields of Shipping, Tourism, and Blue Economy (FP7-FI-PPP frontier Cities SaMMY: Smart App for the Management of Yachting Marinas, H2020- INNOSUP-1-2015 - NEPTUNE “Blue Growth Accelerator Innovation Support”, H2020- MG4.2-2014 Lynceus2Market: People localization for safe ship evacuation during an emergency, among others).

He is a member of the Greek Tourism Startup Group, a founding member of the Collaborative Innovation Formation in Digital Technologies in the Tourism and Culture sectors, a mentor in the Idea Platform Challenge (Coordinated by the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels), a member of the Blue Growth Committee of the Chamber of Achaia, and a member of CAST (Creative Accelerators for Sustainable Tourism). He has been a speaker at international events related to the Blue Economy and maritime tourism, such as the UFM stakeholders conference for the Blue Economy 2017, Paris Nautic Show 2017, ICOMIA Global Marinas Conference 2018, European Commission’s Blue Invest Day 2020 (top-20 Europe’s startups in Blue Economy), and Green Connections of the Blue Waters Conference (Riga, Latvia 2022), among others.

He is an active member of entrepreneurial groups and international initiatives including FIWARE, Corallia (gi-Cluster), STRATEGIS (Center of Excellence for Maritime Technologies), Amazon Naxos Smart Island, etc. Over the past seven years, he has supported initiatives in youth entrepreneurship such as the Piraeus Maritime Hackathon, Bluegrowth Hackathon, Copernicus Hackathon, and entities like Blue Growth Incubator and Orange Grove Accelerator as a mentor or member of review committees. He has also participated in the Advisory Committee of the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation for Tourism-Culture as a specialist expert.

Mr. Kostopoulos holds a PhD from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics at the University of Patras. He is the founder and CEO of the startup SAMMY.