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Athena Research Center had an outstanding presence at the 42nd IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2026), one of the most prestigious and competitive venues in data management and data-intensive systems research worldwide, that was held in Montréal, Canada (May 4–8, 2026).  

 

IEEE ICDE 2026 highlighted recent advances in data management, large-scale data-intensive systems, and AI-driven data engineering. The conference featured cutting-edge work that bridges database systems, machine learning infrastructure, and next-generation data engineering platforms, with strong focus on scalable analytics, cloud-native systems, graph data management, and AI-centric workloads. Across the program, there was clear emphasis on building efficient, scalable, and intelligent systems for multimodal and distributed data processing.

 

Athena RC members contributed across the full breadth of the conference, serving in key leadership roles, receiving a major research award, and earning multiple distinctions for their service to the programme committee.

 

At the organisational level, Alkis Simitsis, Research Director at IMSI, served as Program Committee Co-Chair, overseeing the scientific programme of the conference. Georgia Koutrika, Research Director at IMSI, served as Workshop Co-Chair, coordinating the workshops programme, and was recognised as a Distinguished Area Chair. Prof. Evaggelia Pitoura (University of Ioannina & ARCHIMEDES Unit of Athena RC) served as Panel Co-Chair and she equally received the Distinguished Area Chair recognition, alongside Prof. Nikos Mamoulis (University of Ioannina, affiliated Athena RC researcher) and Manos Athanassoulis (Boston University & affiliated researcher at ARCHIMEDES Unit).

 

On the research front, Manolis Terrovitis (Research Director, IMSI) and Dimitrios Tsitsigkos (ARCHIMEDES Unit), together with Achilleas Michalopoulos (University of Ioannina) and Prof. Nikos Mamoulis received the Best Research Paper Runner-Up Award for their paper "B^S-tree: A Gapped Data-Parallel B-tree" (read more about the award here).

 

Rounding out a remarkable set of recognitions, both George Papastefanatos, Research Director at IMSI, and Dimitrios Tsitsigkos were honoured as Distinguished Program Committee Members for their exceptional contribution to the review process. Taken together, Athena RC's participation at ICDE 2026 , spanning organisational leadership, research excellence, and community service, reflects the Center's strong and growing impact in the international data engineering community.

 

For more information about ICDE 2026, please visit the conference website.