He is also a collaborating researcher with the Computing Systems Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NTUA in 1999, then joined the graduate program in Computer Sciences at the University of Maryland in 2000, where he received his M.Sc. (2002) and Ph.D. (2006). His research interests relate to both systemic and data management aspects of Distributed, Large-Scale Systems: Algorithms for big-data management over distributed platforms as well as optimization aspects of Cloud Computing.