Record attendance for the 10th ACSTAC 2024

More than 180 Anatolia High School students participated in the 10th ACSTAC, taking the opportunity to present their work as real researchers and giving substance to ideas that combine scientific knowledge and social benefit. In total, the conference hosted 550 students from 40 public and private high schools in Greece, who presented their projects in 90 oral presentations or as one of the 73 exhibitions/constructions in the various fields of STEAM.

During the opening ceremony, they had the opportunity to listen to Dr. George Giannopoulos, currently the Head of the Technologies for Space, Security, and Connectivity Unit, working on security-related topics, such as critical infrastructure risk and resilience, Galileo, 5G applications and implementation of the EU Space Program, on the topic "The European Union and space exploration: charting the path to innovation and prosperity for future generations."

After the keynote speech, they watched the seven standout projects identified as frontrunners in the first Social Entrepreneurship Hackathon, an exciting platform for high school students to unleash their creativity and innovative thinking by tackling everyday challenges in their classroom while advocating for sustainability. After the sessions, students also had the opportunity to attend two of the 12 workshops during the two-day conference on a host of topics, such as Patent Office Simulation, Quantum Physics, Robotics, Arduino, and many more.

Congratulations to Christos Bakos for winning 3rd place in the Social Entrepreneurship Hackathon and to the following students for their exhibitions: Anna Mavridou, Anastasia Xente, and Natalia Pavlidou for the Connection to Sustainability award; Annie Zountsa for the Women in Science award; Adam Papadopoulos for the Action for Climate Change award; Gavriil Paparounis, Alessandro Stefan Tiron, and Dimitris Tsoukalas for the Technology award; and Konstantinos Kanakoudis for the Best Partnership award.

We thank Dr. Iro Koliakou, Anatolia Head of STEM, her team, and all the Anatolia teachers who were reviewers, mentors, and evaluators for this conference.

We also thank Dan & Helen Lindsay for their valuable support in making ACSTAC possible.