P9 DIMOKRITIO PANEPISTIMIO THRAKIS

Democritus University of Thrace (D.U.Th.) was founded with the legislative decree no. 37 in July 27th 1973 and started to run in the academic year 1974-1975 with the admission of its first students to the Department of Civil Engineering in Xanthi and the Department of Law in Komotini, and it was named 'Democritus' in honour of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus and operates in multiple campuses, in the cities of Xanthi, Komotini, Alexandroupolis , Orestiada, Kavala, Drama, and Didymoteicho. 

The University is classified among the biggest Greek Universities in terms of the number of its active student population. Geographically dispersed throughout Thrace, with 10 Faculties, 28 Departments and a wide variety of Postgraduate Programs, with a student population that reaches approximately 42,000 (undergraduate, graduate students and candidate PhD students) and with a research and teaching staff that exceeds 700 people, the university still is the only academic institution in the Administrative Region of East Macedonia & Thrace. Τhe Advanced Educational Technologies and Mobile Applications (AETMA) Lab is a research lab which is part of the Department of Computer Science of the Democritus University of Thrace.

AETMA Lab was established in 2016 (Government Gazette Issue Β 836 Section 1 30/03/2016) and re-established in 2020 (Government Gazette Issue Β 4155 Section 1 28/09/2020).

The research of AETMA focuses on the following areas: the development of educational and e-learning software, Augmented / Mixed Reality applications and wearable technologies, mobile applications development & mobile learning, and technology enhanced learning.

Even though AETMA Lab is a newly established Unit, its research team has had long-term cooperation in the past, in a variety of EU and National projects.

AETMA has established collaborations with major players in the globe such as Khan Academy, WEKIT community, Athabasca Open University of Canada, JRC Seville, CESI France, hosting French students with full scholarship, UNESCO -ConECT, Greece, Open University of Netherlands, Join Research Centre Disaster Risk Management Knowledge, Brussels, ViLi project Erasmus +, Lancaster University UK, Queen Rania Foundation Jordan, European University of Cyprus, Kimmens etc.

AETMA Lab has also created a number of AR/VR projects (i.e., ARTutor, Trials of Acropolis, mLearn, AR in Education, Virtual School and others https://aetma.ihu.gr/) and it is annually organising training seminars on emerging technologies, elearning/technology enhanced learning and web programming. It is worth mentioning that ARTutor (a platform for augmenting content) was Nominated by UNESCO Greece November 2018 and also was awarded with the GOLDEN PRICE of Educational Leaders Awards 2019 in the section of "Digital Education" in May 2019. On October 18, 2019 the project Virtual School (a project for training students to recognise good practices to deal with Natural Disasters & the use of 3 Digit Numbers) in collaboration with the network of School Units which participated in the project, received a Distinction from the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Mr. Christos Stylianides. 

The Virtual School project was also awarded with the BRONZE PRIZE of Education Leaders Awards 2020.

AETMA Lab is the only Academic Research Team officially trusted by the Greek Cyber Crime Unit and as a result of this cooperation, AETMA Lab on September 2023, has released two Mixed Reality Games for students 8-12 and 12-18 years old, called  Cyber Crime Digital Academy in order to upskill students of Greek Schools to confront abusive Internet  behaviors. The Cyber Crime Digital Academy was twice  awarded on 2024, receiving the Silver Award in Education Leaders Awards (Greece 2024), and the Second Place on the European Innovation Contest of Europol  (Hague-Holland, 2024).

AETMA in numbers:

- 38 People Behind AETMA: 17 CORE Members, 14 External ,8 CESI France Students under Full Scholarship

- 30 Projects & 30 M Euro Overall Budget Management (19,7 M Euro successful projects in 2019-2025)

- 5 Books/Book Chapter

- 150 Publications (2016-2024)

- 2 UNESCO Nominations (2018, 2022)

- 1 EU Humanitarian Aid Award (2019)

- 2 Best Paper IMCL2019 & 7th International Conf. on Innovation (2019), 1 Best PhD Proposal Award (2022)

- 8 Education Leader Award - GOLD PRIZE for ARTutor (2019), Virtual School (2020), 2 (2021), 2 (2022), 1 (2023) , Silver Award  Cyber Crime Digital Academy (2024).

AETMA Lab has established an Academic Ecosystem on Immersive Technologies and Game Design via the International IMT Msc ( imt.cs.duth.gr) and the Immersive PhD studies