The foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), is a non-profit, private organisation founded by a legislative act of the Greek Parliament in 1993. FHW has already established a solid reputation for its work (strongly dependent upon IT, the use of advanced digital publication, data collection and virtual reality) in developing historical understanding through the exploration of state of the art technology. The primary goals of the foundation are the presentation of Hellenic history and cultural influence, based on the principle that study and interpretative presentation of the past promotes understanding and the preservation of collective memory. Its staff numbers 120 people and includes archaeologists, historians, museologists, computer scientists, graphic designers, 3-D animation modelers and virtual reality engineers.

Key Personnel

Anastasios P. Stamatakis is the head of the Multimedia and Exhibits Team. His responsibilities include: Develop concepts, design and implement the audiovisual requirements as well as contents for the exhibitions of the Foundation using 3-D projection, Virtual Reality environments and other cutting edge technologies. He has produced the presentations of FHW for all announcements either in CD-ROM's, video or live presentations. At FHW he has been involved the projects: Krossia, Chitones, Ntoulamades, Velades -- 4000 years of Hellenic Costume; Interactive educational exhibition using digital video sound and mechanisms to convey the theatrical approach of the curator. F.H.W. Infokiosk; Interactive information center for the facilities at the Cultural Center of the Foundation. Nemesis; Interactive CD presenting the work of the Foundation. Every Year Same Day; Interactive Educational Exhibition utilizing MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 content in conjunction with other custom electronic mechanisms. He was the founder of Heliochrome Productions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (1992 - 1997); he also held positions in Cornerstone Associates, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (1990 - 1992), Instructional Media Services, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, USA (1988 - 1990), and Audio-Visual Department, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, USA (1988 - 1990).

Maria Roussou is currently responsible for the Virtual Reality team at the Foundation of the Hellenic World. During her 5-year work with the CAVE at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, her research interests focused on the design and evaluation of virtual environments for K-12 and informal education. She has also worked on the application of digital media in the representation of cultural information and collaborated with contemporary art museums such as the Walker Art Center to design and create interactive art education material for the Internet. She holds a B.Sc. in Applied Informatics from the Athens University of Economics, a Master of Fine Arts in Electronic Visualization, and a M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her projects and collaborations have been featured internationally at the Ars Electronica Center, SIGGRAPH '94 - '98, Art Futura, MediARTech, ISEA, SuperComputing '94 - '97, ThinkQuest, etc.

Mr. Nickolaos Backalidis is currently responsible for organizing the internal interoperable systems of Foundation of the Hellenic World. He currently is investigating necessities and requirements for high-speed persistent storage on the foundations internal informational (IT) needs. During his five-year industrial experience he has worked in some EEC funded projects. He was responsible at technical and managerial level in the project CTS5SQL/2 EEC DG13. The project involved the research and analysis for database ISO conformance compliance and the implementation of the software test suite. He has worked as a subcontractor for the EEC funded project Agora, which involved a hypermedia application for online interactive business market application pilot pre- Internet era applications. He was responsible at technical level for the Ioniki Epinoia project funded by the Greek Ministry of Education. The project involved the use of Internet as an aid for multimedia interactive tool for the Greek secondary education institutions for the lessons of Greek History. He holds a B.Sc. in Computation from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and an advanced M.Sc. from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in Computer Science.