Costas Balas is full Professor, Director of the Electronics Lab and founder/leader of the Optoelectronics group of the ECE School of Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece. In 2002, and on the basis of his innovations, he founded DySIS-Medical Ltd-a medical device spin-off currently with international activities. Apart from being the founder of DySIS-Medical, he held for more than 10 years key positions, including member of the Board of Directors and Chief Scientific Officer-head of the R&D dept. He is the author or co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has delivered numerous invited presentations in international conferences. He is the sole inventor or the co-inventor of several issued patents (USA, EU, Japan, China etc) or pending patents, a number of which has become products launched worldwide, though technology-transfer contracts. He has attracted multimillion level EU and US grants for supporting his research and has contributed in financing the startup he founded with several millions from international venture capital entities. Prof. Costas Balas, is the Winner of the Applied Research & Innovation Competition "Greece Innovates”, 2013. He has received fellowships, and institutional, conference and patent awards. He has been a member of several international conference committees and a regular paper reviewer in top-level scientific journals and conferences. His research experience/interests include imaging systems, medical diagnostic devices, biophotonics, optical biopsy, hyper-spectral imaging, molecular imaging, in-silico modelling of dynamic bio-optical processes and scientific instrumentation for non destructive analysis. He is a member of IEEE-photonics society, Optical Society of America, SPIE-the International Society for Optical Engineering.
