Mara Nikolaidou is a Professor in the Department of Informatics and Telematics at Harokopio University of Athens, since 2007. Prior her appointment she worked as a computer engineer in the private sector and as IT consultant for the government.
She served as the Rector of the University for two terms (2016-2024). She was elected in the Board of the Rector’s Council of Greek Universities for 2019-2020 and served as the President during the first trimester of her term. She was also appointed as the representative of Greek Universities in the European University Association (EUA) for 2023-2024 and in the steering committee of Pharos Initiative for the collaboration between US and Greek Universities (2019 – 2024).

Her research focuses on distributed systems and complex system design. Over the last years she actively participated in numerous research projects funded by national, European and international agencies on system engineering, the Internet of Things, Cloud and Edge computing, Cyber-physical Systems and Smart Cities, emphasizing human-in-the-loop and autonomous systems. Recently, she explores responsible computing and ethical requirements in system design, focusing on the integration of AI components. She has published more than 200 papers in international journals and conferences, while actively participates in the organization of international conferences in the area of software and systems engineering. She is a member of IEEE (SMC society) and Systems Council. She also participates in OMG, in the working groups for SysML and responsible computing.

https://mara.dit.people.hua.gr