Sotirios Zygiaris, PhD

Sotirios Zygiaris field of expertise is ICT, innovation management and business modeling for smart ecosystems. He is a 1986 graduate of Lamar University USA holding a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with minor in Business Administration. He has a Master’s of Science degree, awarded in 1988 from the same university in USA in the field of Management of Information Systems (MIS). He was awarded a Ph.D. degree from Aristotle University, in 2009 in the analysis of innovation ecosystems. He had valuable Information and Communications Technology experience in the industry working for the petroleum industry in USA for four years from 1986 to 1990.

He was a lecturer for six years at the University of Sheffield, Computer Science Department teaching programming, software engineering and MIS subjects. For the next four years of his career he worked for Business Architects Inco., as a technological change consultant in large-scale Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) projects. In 2000 he joined Aristotle’s University Research Committee, up to 2013, as project manager working in forty international research projects under the umbrella of Urban and Regional Innovation Research Unit (URENIO). His research projects mainly dealt with technological uptake policies for regional innovation, business cluster formation policies and business intelligence methodologies. He had also worked in curriculum design for a post-graduate degree in Innovation Management.

From the years 2000 up to 2013 he was a Visiting Professor at Executive Post-Graduate School of Athens and University Peloponnese teaching the subject of “Technology and Organizational Change”. From the years 2005 to 2013 he had participated in various European Policy Committees, as a European Union International Expert in DG Regional Policy and DG Enterprise and Industry. As international peer expert had participated in review committees related to technological innovation and entrepreneurship policies. He was also an expert reviewer for smart city policies for the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) of Italy.

Currently, he is an Associate Professor in Business Analytics and Digital Marketing and he is serving as a Dean of the Business Administration College since 2022.