Dr. Alexios Lekidis is currently Assistant Professor in Intelligent Energy Systems at the University of Thessaly, Dpt of Energy Systems and project manager in the Energy Policy Unit of ICCS coordinating the META BUILD project. He is specialized in the fields of energy forecasting, e-mobility, IoT and Next Generation Networks, cyber-security, Renewable Energy Sources as well as 5G and beyond cellular networks. His activities involve the coordination and technical management of Horizon Europe projects in energy management systems (including storage, RES and Electric Vehicle integration). Previously he held the position of technical manager for 20 EU-funded Horizon H2020 and Horizon Europe projects in the fields of smart meters, e-mobility, IoT, cyber-security, Renewable Energy Sources (RES), 5G and Next Generation Networks. Moreover, he worked as CTO in the setup of the DEI Blue e-mobility charging network, where he was responsible for the developments, operations as well as maintenance of the chargers, research and customer journey. Earlier, he was working as a Senior Research Engineer in Intracom Telecom for projects related to the design and development of telco solutions for 5G, focusing on NFV technologies. He also worked in the network security industry as a Technical Lead at ForeScout and ENCODE, focusing on network monitoring/security as well as Managed Industrial Security Services. Finally, he has worked on improving the design of lithography machines using algorithmic modeling and digital circuit printing techniques at ASML.