Professor Constandinos Mavromoustakis is known amongst his family and friends as ‘the fixer’; a moniker that he received as a young child since he was the go-to person whenever an electrical device would malfunction at home.

Constandinos always possessed an innate curiosity about how things operate and would often take apart devices in order to gain a better understanding of their inner workings. Beginning with radios and video recorders, he soon moved on to constructing various airplane engines and models using construction kits and technical manuals. At the age of fourteen, Constandinos participated in a national competition representing his school, Laniteion Gymnasium, with a robot construction for which he was awarded the 2nd prize. This defining moment galvanised his interest in devices and, in time, this would develop into a lifelong passion and serve as the thrust of his research work which, today, focuses on anywhere-anytime-anything devices and their respective running applications.

Although Constandinos hails from a medical family (his father was a dental surgeon and both his sisters are in the medical profession) and, initially, he considered working towards gaining acceptance to medical school, his experiences during his formative years and his fascination with technology, ultimately led to the pursuit of a five-year degree (BSc/BEng/MEng) in Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, Greece. When nearing the end of his undergraduate degree, Constandinosand his thesis supervisor engaged in numerous long conversations concerning the possibility of pursuing a career in research. Initially, he was hesitant as he believed that he was more closely aligned with industry and ready-to-market product development and that it was time to seek gainful employment. However, after spending time as an undergraduate assistant in his supervisor’s laboratory, Constandinos experienced a change of heart and realised that he enjoyed the nature and challenge of applied research. In fact, he credits his supervisor with instilling in him the desire and motivation to engage in the quest for new knowledge and discovery. Consequently, he chose to undertake a research project for his thesis and, one year later, this had resulted in two peer-reviewed publications. This cemented his interest in research and, following an MSc in Telecommunications from University College of London, University of London, UK, Constandinos was awarded three research scholarships/grants from Cyprus and Greece that enabled him to pursue a PhD in the area of Distributed Systems (specifically, on time variant anddependant scheduling in distributed systems) from the Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Constandinos remained with the same department for the next year as a postdoctoral research scientist before joining the University of Nicosia (Intercollege at the time) in October 2006 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Over the past ten years, Constandinos has taught at the Mediterranean Institute of Management (MIM) of the Cyprus Productivity Centre, the Cyprus University of Technology and Coventry University in the UK. He served as Associate Head of the Department of Computer Science between 2012 and 2014 and, since October 2013, serves as the Chair of the Department’s Postgraduate Programmes Committee. He has also been involved in several local and European funded research programmes, some of which are highlighted below. When asked about his research areas, it quickly becomes evident that Constandinos’ interest in research has not waned over the years. Instead, his excitement can hardly be contained when he is asked to describe his research interests and to discuss the current important topics in the field. Constandinos’ research lies the area of the Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems, focusing on the concept of connecting any device with an on and off mechanism to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones to coffee makers, cars to washing machines, and headphones to lamps!  His thinking is that “anything that moves can be exploited with Internet connectivity” and this drives his research to come up with new mechanisms to achieve this.

In early 2013, Constandinos set up the Mobile Systems Lab and, together with a group of researchers, focused on several new challenges dealing with the design and implementation of hybrid wireless testbed environments, Real-Time Operating Systems (Mobile Operating Systems), and high-performance cloud and mobile cloud computing (MCC) systems. Through this, the team was able to deploy new ‘green’ mobility-based protocols for large-scale heterogeneous networks. Indeed, he is particularly interested in novel scalable systems’ architectures that enable ‘green devices’ to be deployed in an environment so that they may enhance the quality of living and allow assisted living for people with disabilities in an energy-efficient manner.

Looking forward, he notes that there are many unsolved ‘mysteries’ and research questions in today’s ‘era of Peta’. New access technologies, such as the forthcoming 5G, will go a long way towards solving on-the-move problems in communication infrastructure by allowing each person (through theirsmartphones, glasses, watches, etc.) to passively act as access points for others. Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communication is gaining ground as each device will have the ability to serve the community. In addition, the continuously increasing users’ network activities and the escalating amount of information that they generate within the Internet, have set the basis for a new era of convergence between networks and media, thus paving the way towards the Future Media Internet. New methodological and conceptual challenges for this emergent field, with special attention to the validity and representativeness of social media big data analyses for on-the-move services, will be the next steps in the field. The socio-cultural complexity of user behaviour is another emerging field that will be encapsulated in high-levelcommunication technologies architectures.

With over a dozen funded programmes under his belt, the latest of which is a recently awarded ERASMUS+ funded project, entitled ‘Next gEneration netwoRked mEdia over 4G+ infrastrUctureS’,Constandinos is active in both local and European funded programmes. Another recent project, awarded under the Horizon 2020 framework, entitled ‘nExt generation eMergencY commuNicatiOnS’, aimed at the design and implementation of a Next Generation platform capable of accommodating rich-media emergency calls that combine voice, text, and video, thus constituting a powerful tool for coordinating communication among citizens, call centres and first responders. While, in 2013, a proposal entitled ‘DELTA-Network-Aware Delivery Clouds for User Centric Media Events’ was awarded funding under the Eurostars framework. The project, which aimed at developing an innovative and ready-to-market solution that synergistically combines Networked Media and Telecommunications technologies with Cloud Computing assets into a unified digital ecosystem, enabling users to exploit OTT and IT/Comms services with maximum possible cloud and network-centric parameterized experience, was ranked 1st out of 529 proposals in the ICT domain (and 5th across other existing domains).

It is easy to feel as though one is listening to a foreign (perhaps futuristic!) language when Constandinosdiscusses his research interests and portfolio. Despite this, he is very much a ‘social’ scientist in the sense that he is sensitive to the social value of his work and how it may contribute to the improvement of society. For example, one of the projects he had recently been engaged in involved the development of a mobile platform middleware solution for the localization and assistance for elderly people, which targeted people with severe dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, and aimed to protect and secure people suffering from these diseases, as well as their families by providing them with efficient localisation schemes for their end-devices. He is also very conscious about engaging as many capable students as possible in research by forming strategic collaborations with industrial partners (engagement with industry also allows for the transfer of research knowledge to practical applications). With this in mind, in 2011, he initiated the creation of a student branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which enables students to maintain close contact with one of the world’s largest societies, as well as enjoy access to one of the largest e-libraries that includes important scientific high impact journals. In this way, postgraduate and Doctoral level students, as well as postdoctoral associates are kept abreast of cutting edge technological innovations around the world. As of January 2016, Constandinos was elected and serves as the Vice Chair of the Cyprus section (R8) of the IEEE.

Flash Five 

1. What motivates you to come to work on a daily basis?

From a research perspective, I am motivated by the freedom to explore new or yet-to-be-discovered technologies and the possibility of stumbling upon unexpected discoveries from time-to-time. Working in an academic environment is very challenging as coming into contact with students and fresh, young minds allows us to continually learn new ways of thinking. “While we teach, we learn,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca; these two concepts are tightly coupled. Undoubtedly, the motivation that drives my passion for research is the new questions in the field that I endeavour to solve and the creativity entailed in this.

2. What are your favourite and least favourite aspects of your job? 

My favourite aspect is the fact that, due to the nature of my job, I am constantly questioning how things work and looking for potential solutions to problems that would contribute towards benefiting society. It is exciting to know that, through research, one can have a direct impact in creating or identifying the next ‘hot topic’ in the field! In terms of my least favourite part of my job, I have to say that there really isn’t anything that I can point a finger to. I suppose seeking funding for research is always a challenge as this is often very competitive and scarce. This is especially the case when you live on a small island like Cyprus! Nevertheless, every trial is a learning opportunity and success is possible.

3. Do you have any role models? 

I don’t really have any role models per se. My interpretation of success is to inspire – through research and other activities – more students to become researchers in the field that I am working in. The main challenge is to assist students in developing their critical thinking skills so that s/he can find a perspective that piques and sustains his/her interest and which is relevant to the world and may have a real or significant impact. I believe in an “I do it my way” approach and, therefore, I do not consider myself to be a role model as a researcher in academia. I believe that a role model is someone who embraces the provision of love and care to people, at any time. I regard this in a humanitarian dimension in that “it is more important to make a life than a living!”

4. What do you enjoy doing during your free time? 

My passion is definitely my family: my wife and our three children and the quality time spent with them. Schedule permitting, I enjoy swimming and cycling. I also play the acoustic guitar with a group of friends I have known since high school. We’ve been playing together for several years and while the bandmateshave stayed the same, the songs have changed over time! Simply put, I enjoy spending time – both professionally and personally – with people who spread positive thoughts and energy.

5. What advice would you give to aspiring academics and researchers in your field?

Keep thinking and cultivating your thoughts and ideas by continuously examining the latest literature. And remember, there is always an audience for your ideas and, at some point, one of your ideas may take shape and be realised! I’m also a firm believer in positive thinking and this is something that I try to convey to my students. We all have to face numerous challenges in research and academia. Trying to navigate these with a positive mindset can go a long way to making the journey more enjoyable!

Recent Publications

• Jordi Mongay Batalla, Piotr Krawiec, Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, George Mastorakis, Naveen Chilamkurti, Daniel Négru, Joachim Bruneau-Queyreix and Eugen Borcoci, “Efficient media streaming with collaborative terminals for smart city environment”, in IEEE Communications, accepted/to appear 2017 [Impact Factor 5.125].
• Yiannos Kryftis, George Mastorakis, Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, Jordi Mongay Batalla, Evangelos Pallis and Georgios Kormentzas, “Efficient Entertainment Services Provision over a Novel Network Architecture”, accepted/to appear to the IEEE Wireless Communication magazine, Issue 1, February 2016, pp. 14-21 [Impact Factor 6.524].
• Athina Bourdena, Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, George Mastorakis, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Ciprian Dobre, “Using Socio-Spatial Context in Mobile Cloud Process Offloading for Energy Conservation in Wireless Devices”, accepted in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, to appear (Volume: to appear 2016, Issue: 99), ISSN: 2168-7161, DOI:10.1109/TCC.2015.2511736, Date of online –early view- publication: 31 December 2015, IEEE Communications Society, IEEE [Impact Factor 4.382].
• João Dias, Joel Rodrigues, Feng Xia, and Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, “A Cooperative Watchdog System to Detect Misbehavior Nodes in Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks”, accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, February 2015 [Impact Factor 6.58], Volume 62, Number 1, January 2016, pp. 7929-7937.
• Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, George Mastorakis, Athina Bourdena, Evangelos Pallis, “Energy Efficient Resource Sharing using a Traffic-oriented Routing Scheme for Cognitive Radio Networks”, IET Networks Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, March 2014 (IEEE DL), pp. 54-63. [Impact Factor 1.782]
• Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis et al., “On the Perceived Quality Evaluation of Opportunistic Mobile P2P Scalable Video Streaming”. Proceedings of the IEEE IWCMC 2015 Conference, August 24-27, 2015, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2015, pp. 1515-1519.
• Yiannos Kryftis, George Mastorakis, Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis, Jordi Mongay Batalla, Evangelos Pallis and Georgios Kormentzas, “Efficient Entertainment Services Provision over a Novel Network Architecture”, accepted/to appear to the IEEE Wireless Communication magazine, Issue 1, February 2016, pp. 14-21 [Impact Factor 6.524].

For more information on Professor Mavromoustakis’ academic work visit: https://www.cs.unic.ac.cy/cmavrom/