Speakers

1. George Christodoulakis (U Manchester, LinkedIn) Title: On the Sustainability of Sustainable Finance Abstract: Sustainable finance is subject to a range of regulatory initiatives, investor incentives and market conditions, which eventually influence the risk-return profile of investment with environmental and social goals. This talk shall adopt a market perspective and review the evolution of risk premia required for sustainable finance in both credit and equity markets and the emerging trade-offs for investors, creditors and governments towards sustainability. Bio: Dr George Christodoulakis is an academic at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, and entrepreneur. He has been an executive member of the ICAP CRIF Board of Directors, leading the Credit Rating Agency business as its executive director. He has also served as the State Secretary for Asset Privatizations of Greece, Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Greece, member of the Supervisory Board of ICAP CRIF CRA, member of the Hellenic Corporate Governance Council, and academic at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. A quant financial economist by training, with doctoral and grad studies in London and grad studies in Athens, his expertise concentrates on credit, market, strategic and sustainability risk, sustainable finance, structured finance, and risk management. His research appears in top research journals and books and has published the volumes Managing Risks in the European Periphery Debt Crisis, Palgrave Macmillan 2015, The Analytics of Risk Model Validation, Elsevier 2008, as well as the Journal of Risk Model Validation, Risk Journals since 2006.

1. Vasileios Gkountis (ADMIE / IPTO, LinkedIn) Title: Electricity markets and the need for flexibility Abstract: In this talk, we will discuss the fundamental drivers of recent price spikes in electricity markets and address the need for flexibility that comes with the increased penetration of renewable production in the energy mix. Bio: Dr. Vasileios Gkountis is currently director of market management for IPTO. He holds a diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a PhD degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His professional interests are in energy market economics, design, operation, modelling and analysis. He has been active in energy markets for almost two decades, holding electricity economics expert positions in the Hellenic TSO (HTSO), the former Hellenic Market Operator (LAGIE), and a dutch utility (DELTA). He has also worked for Genscape, as the product manager of EPSI, a power market fundamental analysis platform and was director of strategy and business development for the Hellenic Energy Exchange.

1. Vasiliki Lazarakou (Hellenic Capital Market Commission, LinkedIn) Title: The importance of Sustainable Finance and relevant developments Bio: Vassiliki Lazarakou is Chair of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) since September 2019. She is also a Member of the Board of Supervisors of European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and she has been elected as a Member of the Management Board of ESMA with term until December 2025. She is also the Chair of the JC Sub-Committee on Securitizations. Vassiliki Lazarakou has been a member of the IOSCO Board since October 2022 until October 2024), and she was recently re-elected for another 2 year term, until May 2026, as a representative of the European Regional Committee (ERC) to the IOSCO Board and she was recently elected as the Chair of the newly established Diversity Network of IOSCO. She is a member of the Bureau of the Corporate Governance Committee of the OECD since November 2022. She has been also appointed as a Member of Women Climate Leaders Network (WCLN) of the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group). Dr. Lazarakou has a Doctorate in Law (JSD) from New York University School of Law, New York, U.S.A. and an LLM in International Legal Studies from the same University as well as a Bachelor in Law from the Athens University, School of Law. She is a lawyer admitted at both the Athens Bar and the New York Bar Association with expertise on capital markets, M&As, privatizations, corporate and commercial law and other similar issues. She has worked for more than 20 years as a Partner at several law firms and for more than 10 years she was heading the relevant Banking, Capital Markets and Finance Department of such Firms. From 2012 -2015 she was also a First Vice-Chair of the HCMC

1. George Papatheodorou (Joule, LinkedIn) Title: Aggregators as central counterparties in the remote control and remote supervision of RES projects Abstract: Due to the new requirements of the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator (DEDDIE) for the installation of telemonitoring and remote control equipment in all projects connected to the network, the aggregators assume additional obligations to transfer and monitor allocation orders. However, at the same time opportunities are created for them regarding smart ways of managing their portfolios. Bio: George Papatheodorou is a passionate electrical engineer with a strong interest on energy efficiency. He has successfully developed and operated the RES Aggregation business segment for Wootis SA, a subsidiary of Zephiros Group of Companies, for the past 3 years. He is also a co-Founder and CEO of Joule SA, one of the first Greek companies to develop a virtual power plant.

1. Alexandros Saplaouras (NTUA, webpage) Title: Predicting energy production using SDEs and deep learning: theory and practice Abstract: Based on historical observations extracted from a wind farm and on the (deterministic) numerical weather prediction associated to the area where the farm is located in, we developd a methodology to forecast the short-term energy production of the farm. The main tools in our mathematical arsenal are Ito's Stochastic Differential Equations and machine learning techniques. Bio: Alexandros Saplaouras is the principal investigator of the H.F.R.I. project "Stability and Numerics for BSDEs under Uncertainty and Applications (START)" hosted by the National Technical University of Athens. Previously, he was a Post-Doctoral Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Erhan Bayraktar. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the Technische Universität Berlin under the supervision of Antonis Papapantoleon in 2017. He was awarded the B. Alan Taylor Award for his outstanding teaching by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Michigan in 2019. His main research interests lie in the areas of stochastic calculus with jumps, limit theorems for stochastic processes, their applications in mathematical finance and their numerical implementation. His research work has been published in leading journals in mathematics and probability, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and Electronic Journal of Probability.

1. Evangelos Zacharis (Metlen, LinkedIn) Title: Design and Development of Structured Products for B2B customers to mitigate risks in energy markets Bio: Evangelos Zacharis is the Director of Operations, M Energy Customer Solutions at Protergia. Vangelis is a seasoned energy professional with expertise in energy strategy, innovation, and project delivery and operations. He specializes in low-carbon technologies, energy efficiency, and smart city energy solutions. He joined Protergia in 2020 by leading the development of new energy offerings and managing cross-functional teams to drive sustainable energy solution offerings and business development. Since 2023 he leads the Operations team of Protergia. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Aston University, UK.

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