Hello, I am an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Patras, where I also earned my BSc (integrated MSc) and PhD degrees. I am a member of the Interactive Technologies Laboratory - IT Lab. My research is related to the design, development and evaluation of information systems with an emphasis in human-computer interaction.
Published papers in top-ranked scientific venues, which received awards, and (co-) supervised Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. Long-standing professional experience as a project coordinator and principal investigator in EU-funded and National research projects. Fluent in German, English and Greek.
Email: fidas AT upatras.gr :: LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fidasI am the Project Coordinator of the following European and National research projects.
EU Project CREAMS :: #mixedreality #augmentedreality #virtualreality #artstudents #exhibitions
Scaffolding Creativity of Arts Students: Framework, Toolchain, and Educational Material on how to Create their Own Virtual Exhibitions
(€382,644, 2022-2025, Project Coordinator & Principal Investigator). Funding Agency: European Commission.
More info: CREAMS Project Website
National Project CogniX :: #electroencephalography #eyetracking #cognition
Electroencephalography and Eye Gaze-driven Framework for Intelligent and Real-Time Human Cognitive Modelling (€194,295, 2022-2024, Project Coordinator & Principal Investigator). Funding Agency: Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.).
More info: COGNIX Project Website
EU Project TRUSTID :: #cybersecurity #userauthentication #biometrics
Intelligent and Continuous Online Student Identity Management for Improving Security and Trust in European Higher Education Institutions
(€291,310, 2021-2023, Project Coordinator & Principal Investigator). Funding Agency: European Commission.
More info: TRUSTID Project Website
National Project DeAR Museum :: #mixedreality #virtualreality #culturalheritage
Development and production of augmented and virtual reality applications supporting narrative tours at the Tomato Industrial Museum in order to convey a
personalized experience to the visitors of an old factory (€300,000, 2021-2023, Principal Investigator).
Funding Agency: Research-Create-Innovate.
More info: DeAR Museum Project Website
[Workshop Chair - April 2023]
I am delighted to announce that I will be serving as the Workshop Chair for the 1st International Workshop on Accessibility and Multimodal Interaction Design Approaches in Museums for People with Impairments,
which is set to take place alongside the MobileHCI 2023 conference.
Workshop Abstract: This workshop focuses on methods, tools, and techniques to design and develop mobile museum applications for people with impairments. More specifically, the research that will be presented will relate to technological solutions that support museum visitors with visual, motor, dexterity, hearing, and cognitive impairments. The rationale for the workshop is premised on the significance of providing meaningful and engaging museum experiences to visitors through mobile applications with customized interfaces adapted to the characteristics of various groups of people with special needs. Furthermore, the use of Mixed Reality, i.e., the combination of real and virtual worlds, will be addressed in connection with the quest to foster access and inclusion with regard to museums, and empowerment of people with impairments. The workshop's primary goal is to bring together leading experts to discuss the field's challenges and propose solutions concerning methods, tools, and techniques in HCI, present their research on user requirements, and system design to advance knowledge with the view to optimizing uses of emerging technologies for enhancing cultural inclusion. [More info]
[Opening to Society Activity - March 2023]
We are happy to share that the we hosted a group of 29 third-grade students from the High School - L.T. Farron ,
providing them with a unique opportunity to learn about our research in Brain Computer Interaction. As part of the visit, we demonstrated our state-of-the-art Mixed Reality apparatus, which received great interest and engagement from the young students.
[Publication - February 2023]
We are excited to announce the publication of our research paper, A Review of EEG-Based User Authentication: Trends and Future Research Directions, in IEEE ACCESS.
To learn more, please check out the full article https://10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3253026.
Abstract: Recently, the use of Electroencephalography (EEG) in scientific research on User Authentication (UA) has led to cutting-edge experiments that seek to identify and authenticate individuals based on their brain activity in particular usage scenarios. Utilizing EEG signals, derived from brain activity, might provide innovative solutions to contemporary security issues in traditional knowledge-based user authentication, including the threat of shoulder surfing. In this review paper, we analyze 108 different EEG-based user authentication experiments based on the following perspectives: a) the user experimental setup, with an emphasis on the applied EEG- protocols; b) the artificial intelligence techniques employed and finally c) the security and privacy preservation aspects. The reviewed papers cover a broad time frame from 1998 to 2022 and include various experimental protocols and algorithms used for classifying EEG signals. Additionally, the majority of the referenced works report findings from multiple experiments that incorporate distinct approaches and configurations. This leads to a discussion on best practices for EEG-based User Authentication and conclusions suggesting future research directions that consists, among others, of considering homomorphically encrypted biometric templates for information leakage prevention through federated learning approaches in decentralized architectures. We anticipate that the present literature review will provide a roadmap for future research by considering efficiently and effective EEG-based User Authentication methods while at the same time preserving privacy.
[Keynote Speech - November 2022]
Happy to share my Keynote Speech at the 17th IEEE International Workshop on Semantic and Social Media Adaptation & Personalization.
Summary: Scientific evidence underpins that humans differentiate in their inherent way to perceive and process visual information and that these differences in visual information processing immensely affect user experience and task execution in various application domains. This becomes even more relevant within virtual or mixed interaction contexts and applications which by definition necessitate from end-users to perform advanced visual information processing tasks that entails visual attention, search, processing and comprehension. In this talk we will present our recent research efforts which are focused on understanding the interplay among human cognition, visual behaviour and user experience within virtual and mixed reality interaction contexts. By doing this, we aim at building human cognition-centered user models based on users visual behaviour patterns that can serve as a basis for personalizing user interaction aiming to improve user experience within virtual or mixed reality applications.
[Publication - August 2022]
We are delighted that our longitudinal research that spanned over two years and embraced three public European healthcare organizations, with 169 participants,
will be published at ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare.
Title: "Security and Usability of a Personalized User Authentication Paradigm: Insights from a Longitudinal Study with Three Healthcare Organizations"
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3564610
Abstract: This paper proposes a user-adaptable and personalized authentication paradigm for healthcare organizations, which anticipates to seamlessly reflect patients episodic and autobiographical memories to graphical and textual passwords aiming to improve the security strength of user-selected passwords and provide a positive user experience. We report on a longitudinal study that spanned over two years in which three public European healthcare organizations participated in order to design and evaluate the aforementioned paradigm. Three studies were conducted (N=169) with different stakeholders: i) a verification study aiming to identify existing authentication practices of the three healthcare organizations with diverse stakeholders (N=9); ii) a patient-centric feasibility study during which users interacted with the proposed authentication system (N=68); and iii) a human guessing attack study focusing on vulnerabilities among people sharing common experiences within location-aware images used for graphical passwords (N=92). Results revealed that the suggested paradigm scored high with regards to users' likeability, perceived security, usability and trust, but more importantly it assists the creation of more secure passwords. On the downside, the suggested paradigm introduces password guessing vulnerabilities from individuals sharing common experiences with the end-users. Findings are expected to scaffold the design of more patient-centric knowledge-based authentication mechanisms within nowadays dynamic computation realms.
[Publication - July 2022]
We are happy that our paper "Supporting People with Visual Impairments in Cultural Heritage: Survey and Future Research Directions" has been accepted at the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2022.
- Impact Factor: 4.920
Authors: Sylaiou S., Fidas C. (2022)- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2022.2098930
Abstract: This literature review surveys published research that aims to foster blind and visually impaired (VI) people's engagement with cultural heritage. Fifty (50) papers are included in this survey, published between 2008 and 2021. They mostly focus on multisensory, multimodal, and interdisciplinary, ICT-based assistive human- centered computing approaches. These methods often optimize the user experience of VI-user's through an effort to gain an in-depth understanding of this special group's needs and accordingly design adaptive and adaptable interaction workflows. Moreover, several publications include user evaluations and empirical studies. Findings suggest that approaches tend to become more complex, multimodal, and multidisciplinary as time progresses. This leads to a discussion and conclusions suggesting future research directions in this domain. The proposed way forward relates to a synthesis of methodologies, scientific domains, and approaches into a more holistic, comprehensive, and synergetic model.
[Research Equipment - May 2022]
We are happy to announce further extension of our laboratory research infrastructure by acquiring cutting-edge equipment with a total amount >50K. Among others, we obtained a state-of-the-art 41-channel Electroencephalography (EEG) device, a mixed-reality hands-free controllable headset and couple of eye-tracking lens.
We aspire to design and conduct EEG multi-modal experiments to measure cognitive traits within innovative breakthrough interaction realms like MR/AR and VR and gesture control along with visual and/or acoustic stimuli. Moreover, we aim to develop and evaluate an electroencephalography based framework for intelligent real-time modeling of user cognitive intentions, thus laying the ground for ground-breaking advancements in various Brain Computer Interaction research fields.
More info: COGNIX Project Website
[EU Project - December 2021] Happy to act as a Project Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the EU project CREAMS - Scaffolding Creativity of Arts Students: Framework, Toolchain, and Educational Material on how to Create their Own Virtual Exhibitions. The proposal was submitted in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Cognitive UX GmbH (Germany), the Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus), the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art (Israel), and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway).
[Research Project - July 2021]
Excited to receive a research grant of €194,295.00, from the
Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.),
to Support Faculty Members & Researchers in the field of Engineering Sciences and Technology.
[Publications - June 2021]
Happy about our three new paper publication at the 18th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2021), entitled "A Field Dependence-Independence Perspective on Eye Gaze Behavior within Affective Activities", "An Empirical Study of Picture Password Composition on Smartwatches" and "Understanding Insider Attacks in Personalized Picture Password Schemes".
[EU Project - March 2021]
I am honored to act as a Project Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the EU project TRUSTID that has been approved by the European Commission with a total funding of €291,310.
The proposal was submitted in collaboration with the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), the Institute of Systems and Robotics - University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Cognitive UX GmbH (Germany).
[Workshop at ACM UMAP 2021 - January 2021] I am looking forward to running the 3rd edition of our workshop APPS 2021 - Adaptive and Personalized Privacy and Security, in conjunction with ACM UMAP 2021. Our special focus in 2021 will be on challenges and opportunities related to the Covid-19 outbreak on ensuring security and privacy of sensitive data and secure user interactions in online systems such as challenges for online distance learning, the need for touchless authentication, e-Government, e-Commerce, etc.
[Publication - January 2021]
Our paper entitled "From hot-spots towards experience-spots: Leveraging on users' sociocultural experiences to enhance security in cued-recall graphical authentication" has been accepted at the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
[New Position - November 2020] I am thankful for spending the last years at the Department of Cutlural Heritage Management and New Technologies of the University of Patras. Many thanks to all my colleagues and supporting staff for a fruitful and joyful collaboration. I am very happy to join the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Patras. I look forward to work with my new colleagues and students.
[Guest Editor of Special Issue - November 2020] I am the Guest Editor, together with Dr. Stella Sylaiou and Dr. George Pavlidis, of the Special Issue "Mixed Reality in Culture and Heritage" at the Heritage Journal. Please download the Call for Papers (.pdf)
[Best Paper Award - October 2020]
We received the prestigious UMUAI James Chen award for best paper of 2019, for our paper entitled "A cognition-centered personalization framework for cultural heritage content".
The User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction (UMUAI) James Chen Award is bestowed annually to the author(s) of the best paper of the year.
The award has been donated by the Chen family in commemoration of James R. Chen.
In this work, we have designed and developed CogniKit, an extensible tool for human cognitive modeling. It is based on the analysis, classification and visualization of eye tracking data such as gaze points, fixation count and duration, saccades, gaze transition and stationary entropy, heat maps, areas of interests, etc. These are further processed, analyzed and classified for detecting higher level human cognitive factors such as cognitive processing styles and abilities. CogniKit comprises of two main components: i) a software application that collects and processes low- and high-level eye gaze data metrics in real-time; and ii) an extensible interactive workbench for storing, analyzing, classifying and visualizing the collected eye gaze data.
Relevant paper: ACM WI 2019, ACM IUI 2020
Mixed reality technologies embrace hand gesture-based interaction modalities, which can be leveraged by picture passwords, as they require users to draw secret gestures on a background image. In this work, we have designed and developed HoloPass, a novel mixed reality application that utilizes the Microsoft HoloLens device that allows users to directly interact with picture-based holograms in order to perform user authentication tasks. The current prototype was developed in Unity 3D, using C# and Microsoft's Mixed Reality Toolkit for HoloLens, and follows implementation guidelines of Microsoft Windows 10 Picture Gesture Authentication in which users draw three secret gestures on a background image that acts as a cue.
Relevant papers: ACM CHI 2019, INTERACT 2019
This work aims at scaffolding end-users in improving the security of graphical passwords through a playful interaction design in mixed reality. For doing so, we elaborated on a playful interaction de-sign framework and developed, based on it, an experimental mixed reality (MR) application that deployed multi-modal and playful user interaction experiences. A user evaluation woth 30 participants revealed that introducing playful characteristics in the design of MR graphical passwords had a catalyst effect on the security of user generated passwords and simultaneously affected significantly end-users' perceptions and understanding related to security semantics of graphical passwords.
Assistant Professor (2021-) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras
Assistant Professor (2016-2020), Tenure-track Lecturer (2013-2016) at the Department of Cultural Heritage and New Technologies, University of Patras
Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus (2011-2013)
Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Patras, University of Ioannina, Technical Institute of Patras (2004-2011)
I am always happy to discuss with prospective students new research endeavors in the areas of Information Systems and Culture, Modelling Human Cognition in Interactive Systems, and Usable Security. If you are interested to discuss your research idea please don't hesitate to contact me at fidas AT upatras.gr
Suggested Topics for Ph.D.