George Carayannis was a Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University or Athens (NTUA) from 1984 until 2011. He was the founder of the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) in 1991 and he had been its Director from 1992 until 2006. In the period 2006-2010 he was appointed as Director General and President of the Board of Directors of the Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies “Athena”.

He received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the NTUA in 1969, and the French DEA degrees in Nuclear Reactor Physics and Computer Science from the University of Paris, 1970 and 1971 respectively. He obtained the French Docteur-Ingenieur degree in Computer Science from the University of Paris in 1973 and the Docteur es Sciences degree in Physics from Orsay University in 1978.

He was working with the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in Paris from 1971 to 1974 and with the Brussels Free University from 1974 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980 he was working for the Research center of National Defense in Athens as project leader developing speech processing technology. He jointed the NTUA in 1980 as Research Fellow. From 1981 to 1983 he was working for the Council of Europe as Secretary of the European Joint Committee for Scientific Co-operation, a committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He was a member of the ESPRIT and IT & C Management Committees for two years period (1990-1992). He was a member of the Language Engineering Working Party of the Telematics Management Committee and an expert of the INFO2000 / MLIS Committee for language technology issues. He was the author of the Greek national report on educational matters to the UNESCO 28th Conference in October 1995. He was the Greek national delegate in the Task Force on multimedia and coordinated the Greek national report. He had been the coordinator of many projects both national and European related to language processing and speech processing. He was xperienced in the evaluation of research projects and programs of European Union (ESPRIT, TIDE, DELTA, et.). He had been an advisor of the Greek Ministry of Presidency in matters related to the introduction of new technologies in the public sector and the simplification of procedures (1994-1995) and President of the Greek Pedagogical Institute from August 1995 to December 1996. He was the head of the Greek research unit involved in the machine translation effort of the European Communities (EUROTRA 1989-1993).

He was one of the pioneers in the research and development of machine learning and artificial intelligence systems for human-machine communication with speech and natural language. His research interests included Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Computational Complexity and Fast Algorithms in DSP, Speech Analysis and Synthesis, Biological Signal Processing, Image and Speech recognition, Multimedia information systems, Linguistic Processing and Educational Technologies. He had published over 160 research papers related to these topics. He was also involved in the design of educational technology products mainly for language teaching as well as in the design of language & speech technology products.

Professor Carayannis had taught at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering courses on signal and system theory, digital signal processing and pattern recognition. He was an instructor of the CEI-Europe/Elsevier giving specialized courses for the European industry on fast algorithms for adaptive signal processing. He was supervisor of approximately 30 Ph.D. theses on Pattern recognition, Signal processing, Language Technology as well as on applications concerning Education and people with disabilities.

Professor Carayannis was a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece, the IEEE and EURASIP. He was a member of the Editorial Board of the European Technical Journal “Signal Processing” for many years. He was a founding member of the Greek “technology assessment” association (1995) and the European Language Resources Association (1995).