Hellenic OCR Team

Est. 11111100001

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About the Hellenic OCR Team

In late 2017, a unique crowdsourcing platform was born. The Hellenic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Team represents the first scientific crowdsourcing initiative that aims exclusively at the processing and study of parliamentary textual data. It builds on the plain idea that a decentralized group of people can be more than the mere sum of individuals.

Our team members are virtually linked through an online exchange platform and gather regularly for monthly meetings, where problems are discussed and best practices are exchanged. Newcomers receive basic training on entering the group, while more experienced members, called ‘mentors’, provide peer-to-peer advice and support. Text processing follows a well-defined streamlined process, which is developed in order to build quality corpora of parliamentary relevance. The resulting content is brought in an open and structured format, such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), and enables the use of novel tools and methods from the exciting field of computational linguistics.

The opportunities that arise from the study of the aforementioned corpora are tremendous, as they allow for interlinking of several – formerly distant – areas of research, such as history, political science and linguistics, thus opening up new horizons in the understanding of parliamentary data and discourse. The Hellenic OCR Team is rapidly expanding and we are looking for interested individuals to further enhance our dynamic interdisciplinary team.

 

We need..
  • A bit of your spare time
  • A lot of scientific curiosity
  • Your engagement and support
We offer..
  • Certified training
  • Opportunity to join an international scientific network
  • Early access to scientific projects
  • Hands-on working experience on state-of-the-art tools and methods

Contact the Hellenic OCR Team - Become a Member

5 + 4 =

   The Team

Dr. Fotis Fitsilis
Dr. Fotis Fitsilis

Co-Founder and Team Leader

Digital policy expert

Prof. Giorgos Mikros
Prof. Giorgos Mikros

Co-Founder and Science Lead

Prof. Iasonas Lamprianou
Prof. Iasonas Lamprianou

University of Cyprus

Prof. Ioannis Armakolas
Prof. Ioannis Armakolas

Comparative Politics

University of Macedonia

Marina-Eirini Kousta
Marina-Eirini Kousta

International Health Policy

London School of Economics

Alexandra Fiotaki
Alexandra Fiotaki

Computational Linguist

University of Ioannina

Katerina Tzortzi
Katerina Tzortzi

Computational Linguist

University of Crete

Polytimi Mountanea
Polytimi Mountanea

International Political Economy

Eleni Zisioglou
Eleni Zisioglou

Legal expert

Ioannis Gianniadis
Ioannis Gianniadis

Digital Identity Specialist

Panagiotis Papantonakis
Panagiotis Papantonakis

Electrical and Computer Engineering student

Prof. Christos G. Alexopoulos
Prof. Christos G. Alexopoulos

Academy of Applied Preschool Teaching and Health Studies

Vasileios Kesidis
Vasileios Kesidis

Trainee

Dr. Ilias Spais
Dr. Ilias Spais

Senior Research Associate

Helen Papastrati
Helen Papastrati

Thesis π Schools (Founder/Director)

Chiara Spiniello PhD
Chiara Spiniello PhD

Legal professional

Maria-Eleni Georgoulea
Maria-Eleni Georgoulea

Student of Law

Antonino Nielfi
Antonino Nielfi

parliamentary researcher

Anna Maria Zikou
Anna Maria Zikou

Legal professional

Democritus University of Thrace

Spyridoula-Anna Pappa
Spyridoula-Anna Pappa

Italian Philology

University of Athens

Dr. Michael Fitsilis
Dr. Michael Fitsilis

Software developer

RWTH Aachen

Sotiris Leventis
Sotiris Leventis

Director

Dimitris Garantziotis
Dimitris Garantziotis

Legal expert

University of Athens

Dr Maria Kamilaki
Dr Maria Kamilaki

Linguist

Alexandros Tsomarelis
Alexandros Tsomarelis

Technical Solutions & Crypto Enthusiast

Vasileios Anastasiou
Vasileios Anastasiou

Software developer

Dr Afroditi Giovani
Dr Afroditi Giovani

Linguist

Dr. Vasilis Tountopoulos
Dr. Vasilis Tountopoulos

Senior ICT consultant

Luís Kimaid
Luís Kimaid

Political Scientist

Bruce Todd
Bruce Todd

Specialist in justice & home affairs

Antonia Becou
Antonia Becou

Graphic designer

Dora Kallipolitou
Dora Kallipolitou

Expert in circular economy

Natasa Theochari
Natasa Theochari

Italian Philology and Literature

University of Athens

Alexandros Fikas
Alexandros Fikas

Italian Philology

University of Athens

Eleni Tsaireli
Eleni Tsaireli

Contemporary European Studies

Foteini Kakaitsa
Foteini Kakaitsa

Postgraduate studies Italian Philology

Konstantinos Tsiaras
Konstantinos Tsiaras

Computer Science

University of Athens

Ioanna Asanakidi
Ioanna Asanakidi

Linguist

Evangelos Dimiou
Evangelos Dimiou

Undergraduate Student of Political Science

Elias Tsironis
Elias Tsironis

Cloud architect

Panagiotis Patalas
Panagiotis Patalas

Electrical Engineer, Sustainable Energy Solutions

Leonidas Kallipolitis
Leonidas Kallipolitis

Senior Software Engineer

Prof. Enrico Borghetto
Prof. Enrico Borghetto

Political & Social Sciences

Prof. Jörn von Lucke
Prof. Jörn von Lucke

The Open Government Institute

Yiannis Armenakis
Yiannis Armenakis

Legal advisor and investigator

Athanasia Pliakogianni
Athanasia Pliakogianni

Political Science

University of Bamberg

Anna Karampali
Anna Karampali

Computational Linguistics Lab

University of Athens

Sotiris Kranias
Sotiris Kranias

Computational Social Science

Franco Gatti
Franco Gatti

PhD Student in Italian Linguistics

Paraskevi Tsimpouki
Paraskevi Tsimpouki

Linguist

University of Athens

Apostolos Dalas, M.Sc.
Apostolos Dalas, M.Sc.

Electrical and Electronics Engineer

Prof. Juan de Dios Cincunegui
Prof. Juan de Dios Cincunegui

Parliamentary Law and Diplomacy

Irene Theodoropoulou
Irene Theodoropoulou

Associate Professor of Linguistics

Dimitris Koryzis
Dimitris Koryzis

Systems Engineer & art curator

Prof. Vilelmini Sosoni
Prof. Vilelmini Sosoni

Translation and Linguist

Prof. Renato Ibrido
Prof. Renato Ibrido

Legal Sciences

Dr. Muhamad Sayuti Hassan
Dr. Muhamad Sayuti Hassan

Senior Lecturer of Law

Prof. Stéphane Gagnon
Prof. Stéphane Gagnon

Government and Legal Informatics

  Institutional Members

Member Locations

Athens

– Hellenic Parliament

– National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

SW development, private sector

Komotini

Democritus University of Thrace

Nicosia

University of Cyprus

Thessaloniki

University of Macedonia

Coventry

Warwick University

Padova

Padova University

 

London

London School of Economics

Friedrichshafen

SW development, private sector

Doha

Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Huddersfield

Hansard at Huddersfield

Patras Science Park

Kavala City

Krusevac City

Montreal City

Luxembourg

Organization

La Universidad Austral

Bússola Tech

BitNomos S.R.L.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

POPVOX, INC.

Université du Québec en Outaouais

Institute of Parliamentarism

Uxabay

Our Blog

hellenicOCRteam.gr/blog

ARPC workshop

A workshop on “Advanced analysis and recognition of parliamentary corpora” (ARPC) will be organized at the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition conference (ICDAR 2024), which will take place is Athens, Greece. The ARPC workshop will be held on Saturday, 31 August 2024.

read more…

Diversifying LEOS

Hellenic OCR Team continues its tireless efforts on the transformation of parliamentary control. Sotiris LeventisVasileios Anastasiou and Fotis Fitsilis have used a modified Legislation Editing Open Software (LEOS) entity as the primary system, which was linked through software agents to an independent data source.

read more…

Rule as Code

In February 2021, SmartLegal and the Hellenic OCR Team joined forces to use the Rule-as-Code approach on Greek legislation! Using SmartLegal’s platform, an existing law will be transformed into machine-consumable language (code). This proof-of-concept, applied on a Greek law for the first time, has the potential to deliver better, digital ready regulations that can be tested before actual implementation.

read more…

A new milestone!

The Hellenic OCR Team reaches a new milestone! Today, we proudly celebrate our expansion to 40 members. As of now, our Team has 36 individual and four institutional members that closely cooperate to achieve a set of greater goals, such as data openness, systemic interoperability and digital transformation of parliamentary institutions.  read more…

Hellenic OCR Team – Hypernetica joint announcement

The Hellenic OCR Team, the world’s first crowdsourcing initiative for the processing and analysis of parliamentary data, and Hypernetica, an emerging provider of business process automation and interoperability software solutions, join forces to commonly tackle legal informatics challenges in the parliamentary environment and in public governance at large.

read more…

May 2020 newsletter

Our May 2020 newsletter (#7) is finally there and includes major steps of our aggressive evolutionary process, such as ramping up software development, concluding parliamentary control sampling, initiation of cooperation with European Commission instances and partnerships with Hypernetica and Hansard at Huddersfield.

read more…

Working on LEOS

On 29 April 2020, our development team, i.e. Sotiris Leventis, Konstantinos Tsiaras, Panagiotis Papantonakis and Dr. Fotios Fitsilis, had the opportunity to participate to an online workshop for LEOS – Legislation Editing Open Software organized by DG DIGIT at the European Commission. 

read more…

It’s our second anniversary!

Something big happened back in November 2017; our scientific crowdsourcing initiative, the Hellenic OCR Team, came to life! This November, members and supporters celebrate our second anniversary. Look out for a special monthly meetup and get introduced into the state-of-the-art processing and analysis of parliamentary data.

read more…

To άρθρο του Παναγιώτη Παπαντωνάκη για το GSoC 2019

Στα πλαίσια του Google Summer of Code 2019 αναπτύχθηκε για το Hellenic OCR Team ένα πρόγραμμα Windows για την εξαγωγή γλωσσικών χαρακτηριστικών από αρχεία κειμένου με τίτλο Development of a Tool for Extracting Quantitative Text Profiles. Διαβάστε στο blog της ομάδας εργασίας για το ανοικτό λογισμικό το σχετικό κείμενο του μέλους μας Παναγιώτη Παπαντωνάκη.

September 2019 Newsletter

Our September 2019 newsletter (#6) is out … and what a busy summer this has been! A plethora of activities is presented therein, from our participation to the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019 to the expansion of our operations in new and exciting sectors.

read more…

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