Prof. Stelios Tzortzakis receives the Rozhdestvensky MedalProf. Stelios Tzortzakis from the IESL-FORTH has been invited to officially open the Optics 2013 conference in St. Petersburg last October with a plenary lecture, followed by a short ceremony where he was awarded the Rozhdestvensky Medal of the Russian Optical Society for key contributions in strong laser and THz field Optics. The Medal was delivered by the Russian Academician E. B. Alexandrov.

FORTH and Forthnet collaborate in the MESH-WISE project for the development of heterogeneous self-organising Wireless Mesh NetworksWireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are considered as a promising solution for providing scalable, ubiquitous, reliable and cost-effective broadband access in rural environments.

Nektarios Tavernarakis is the new Director of FORTH’s Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, in Heraklion, Crete, GreeceNektarios Tavernarakis was elected on Saturday, September 21, in the position of the Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, at the Foundation for Research and Technology, in Heraklion, Crete, Greece. Dr. Tavernarakis has been heading the Neurogenetics and Ageing laboratory of the Institute, and is an elected Excellence Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at the Medical School of the University of Crete.

NetVolution: Α new ERC starting grant was awarded to FORTH-ICSA new distinction for FORTH, Greece's major Research Centre, came through the recent approval by the ERC (European Research Council) of one more proposal that was submitted by Dr. Xenofontas Dimitropoulos of FORTH's Institute of Computer Science (ICS). This ERC grant will fund Dimitropoulos' "NetVolution" project, to perform research on evolving the routing system of the Internet. ERC starting grants are considered highly honorary: they are given for cutting edge research and they are very competitive -- in 2013, out of 3,329 proposals that were submitted Europe-wide and across all disciplines, only 287 were accepted, i.e. just nine percent (9%); only two (2) of these 287 approved grants are given to researchers in Greek institutions, and "NetVolution" is one of the two. Dr. Dimitropoulos is repatriating to Greece, coming to FORTH and the University of Crete, where he has been elected Assistant Professor, leaving his position with ETH Zurich.