Marinos Ioannides

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Short Biography

Dr. Marinos Ioannides has served since 1 January 2012 as Director of the Digital Heritage Research Lab at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in Limassol. Under his leadership, the lab has secured and implemented several EU-funded projects during its first decade, with a total project budget for CUT exceeding €10.1 million.

He holds an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, where his master’s thesis was conducted at the HP European Headquarters, focusing on safety and security in multitasking repository systems. He continued at the same university for his PhD (Dr.-Ing.), contributing to multiple EU and German Research Foundation (DFG) projects. During his doctoral research, he developed pioneering methods for 3D volumetric reconstruction of objects from scattered digitised data, work which earned him the IBM Award in 1993 (valued at 3 Million Deutsche Mark).

In recognition of his contributions to digital heritage and 3D documentation, he received the EU KIT Award from the European Commission in 1995 and the Tartessos Prize from the Spanish Association of Virtual Archaeology in 2010. In 2017, he was awarded the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage, the first and only Chair worldwide dedicated to education, science, and technology in this field. In the same year, he also coordinated the three years long EU H2020 Virtual Multimodal Museum (ViMM) project, whose main objective was to set up the agenda for Horizon Europe in Digital Heritage. The resulting ViMM Action Plan received excellent evaluations and feedback from stakeholders and domain experts worldwide. In 2018, he received the EU Innovation Award at the Innovators in Cultural Heritage Fair in Brussels, as well as the European Research Area (ERA) Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage, supported by €2.5 million to establish a regional Centre of Excellence in Cyprus and to develop an international online Master’s programme in Digital Cultural Heritage.

In 2019, the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency recognised his Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action project (MSCA ITN-DCH) as one of the five most impactful “life-changing innovation projects” of the decade (2009–2019) in the EU.

Since 2021, he has been an Honorary Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and In 2022, the European Commission published under open access the results of the EU VIGIE2020/654 Study on the Quality in 3D Digitisation of Tangible Cultural Heritage as an official EU document, highlighting its exceptional outcomes. Under his leadership, the Cyprus University of Technology successfully won and coordinated this highly competitive European Commission tender, the first of its kind in the field of cultural heritage digitisation – delivering a comprehensive framework of standards, benchmarks, methodologies, best practices, and guidelines that has significantly contributed to improving the quality, interoperability, and sustainability of 3D digitisation practices across Europe and supporting the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector. The study’s results have since been adopted and implemented by numerous EU-funded projects and by national authorities across several EU Member States as the foundation for establishing Quality Certification frameworks (Paradata) and assessment criteria for cultural heritage data acquisition and 3D digitisation projects. Furthermore, the study has gained international recognition as an educational reference resource and is being used by several universities, higher education institutions, and vocational training authorities worldwide as teaching and learning material, supporting the education and professional training of students and practitioners in the fields of digital cultural heritage, 3D digitisation, and digital preservation.

Under his leadership and coordination, the Cyprus University of Technology established a bilateral cooperation agreement with the Swedish Ministry of Culture for the digitisation and 3D modelling of the largest collection of Cypriot artefacts outside Cyprus, housed at the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2024, with the support of final year students and volunteers from across Europe, he launched a large-scale initiative to digitally preserve and document this unique collection through advanced 3D technologies. The resulting digital assets are made available under Open Access principles, ensuring broad public accessibility and supporting research, education, Cultural/Science Diplomacy and cultural heritage awareness/dissemination through Europeana.

In June 2025, his proposal for the establishment of the first-of-its-kind Research Centre at the Cyprus University of Technology was formally approved by the Government of Cyprus, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finances, the Deputy Ministry of Culture, the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, the Attorney General, the Cabinet of Ministers, as well as the Parliamentary Committee on Education and Culture and the plenary session of the Cyprus Parliament.

Since 2006, he has served as the founder and lead organiser of the EuroMed Conference on Digital Cultural Heritage, one of the premier international scientific conferences in the field of Digital Cultural Heritage. Since 2015, the event has followed a biennial structure, alternating between a Panhellenic conference conducted in Greek in odd-numbered years and an international conference conducted in English in even-numbered years. The proceedings of the international conference are published by Springer-Nature.

He was also the principal organiser and coordinator of the Digital Heritage Summit 2026 at the UNESCO Chair on DCH at the Cyprus University of Technology, organised in collaboration with Heritage Malta under the auspices of the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Deputy Ministry of Culture of Cyprus. The Summit was further organised in cooperation with the European Commission Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) and Europeana. The event brought together 332 leading stakeholders and experts from academia, industry, cultural institutions, and public organisations, including representatives from the majority of EU-funded projects associated with the European Commission’s cultural heritage data space and cloud initiatives. It served as a major forum for advancing the EU Policy, preservation, documentation, management, and dissemination of cultural heritage through cutting-edge digital technologies and international collaboration.

DHRLab Projects

• Digital Europe EUreka3D-XR [2025-2026]
• Horizon Europe HERITALISE [2025-2528]
• Digital Europe EUreka3D [2024-2024]
• HORIZON 2020 TExTOUR [2024-2024]
• HORIZON 2020 ERA Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage MNEMOSYNE [2023-2023]

DHRLab Publication Record

Forthcoming

Published in 2026

Published in 2025

Published in 2024