George Kazazis

BSc in Informatics & Telematics @HUA / BSc in Electronics @Hellenic Navy
Former Warrant Officer @Hellenic NavyCurrently
QA Testing & Implementation @Euronet Worldwide
Research Associate @HUA

Short bio

Hello there and welcome to my webpage! I hope you're ready for a quick and short bio!

In 2012, I joined the Hellenic Navy Petty Officer Academy, through national exams, and after completing a series of very demanding tests, physical, psychological and otherwise. Was my decision right? Let's talk about that...After my graduation in 2014, with the specialty of Electronic Systems Technician, I got into the Dept. of Informatics & Telematics @ Harokopio University of Athens. So, for the time being, I have a full-time job in the military industry, plus the possibility of obtaining a second degree. Sounds good, right? Well...I never managed to attend any classes, due to the fact that I was away on trips, for more than 230 days a year. So that was it, I had no doubt that I was expelled from the university. The greatest opportunity, now lost. Or at least I thought so...In 2022, having acquired a decade's worth of experience, I gave in to the thoughts I've had for the last few years, and left the Navy at the rank of Warrant Officer, taking with me all the skills I built up. The discipline, the sense of urgency, the decision making ability, the teamwork spirit and of course, the ability to work under extreme pressure.Reasons why I left? Plenty... Let's leave it for another time...The first step was taken, just outside my confort zone, a career change.Of course, I can't say I didn't have a plan in mind. Remember the university, right? Apparently, I wasn't expelled at all. Now we're talking...In March 2022, I started my studies in Computer Science, in order to obtain my Bachelor's Degree @HUA. I can say that graduation is just around the corner. I can smell the paper. Of course there are 4 academic years on the table, but because of the years that had passed, I was able to attend any class I want, and that's what I did.Basically, it was a speedrun situation, due to the fact that I'm a bit of a quick-learner. I know that this is indeed the right lane for me. The goal was to graduate in September 2023, at the latest, and that's what actually happened. By July 2023 I had passed 42 courses, and It was time for me to start working on my Bachelor's Thesis on developing and evaluating Reinforcement Learning models for the FOSSBot open source educational robot. Thesis Repo. My Thesis presentation was hosted on Friday 29/09, and my journey ended successfully (and right on time!).I started my career journey in Euronet Worldwide, as a System Engineer for the ECS Technical Delivery Team, while also working as a Research Associate for Harokopio University.If I sound like somebody you would like to work with, let's connect!

Education & Certifications

Volunteering

I was honored to volunteer in the IEEE CISOSE 2023, hosted by HUA, helping our guest-speakers to present their work (papers) and making sure the program flows smoothly.

I, also, volunteered in Athens Science Festival 2022 [Oct 2022], organized by SciCo, an organization focusing on scientific engagement and empowerment, through innovative, interactive, and entertaining means.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Tools & Languages

So far, I've learned and used quite a few programming languages:

...tools:

...and frameworks:

Projects

Development and Evaluation of RL models for the FOSSBot open source educational robot [Jul 2023 - Sep 2023] - Bachelor Thesis

On-going project, in which I train and evaluate RL models [PPO-DQN-TRPO-A2C] on FOSSBot, in order to make it learn how to avoid obstacles in its way reaching a target destination. PPO and DQN models succeeded on 15x15 and 30x30 grid environment, scoring 97.3% and 93.6% respectively.Tools used: Python, OpenAI Gym, stable-baselines3, PyTorch, Weights and Biases

PPO vs DQN metrics (Grid)

15x15 Grid Environment

30x30 Grid Environment [PPO model]

PPO outperformed DQN in the simulation environment, succeeding in 74% of the episodes.Tools used: Python, OpenAI Gym, stable-baselines3, PyTorch, Weights and Biases, CoppeliaSim

PPO vs DQN metrics (Simulation)

Simulation Environment - CoppeliaSim [PPO model]

ΟΑΣΑ congestion estimation [Jun 2023 - Jul 2023]

Building a messaging system that informs users about ΟΑΣΑ metro stations congestion estimation for a chosen (past) date.
Goal: Make it work for future dates using AI/ML
Tools used: Node-RED, RabbitMQ, Javascript, K-means

Flows

Conclusions

FOSSBot 2022 [Jul 2022 - Present]

EELLAK (GFOSS) in collaboration with Harokopio University of Athens have designed and developed FOSSBot, an Open Source and Design Educational Robot. All 3D drawings and the code for the operation of the robot are freely available on EELLAK's Github. I worked on assembling the robot's hardware-electronics, as well as on maintining the backend.
Tools used: Flask, Python

• GitHub

• Download CV

Contact

For my coding projects, you can visit my Github page. In any case, do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or just want to connect. See ya !

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Email
• Discord