Key speakers

Dr. Nikolas L. Hourvouliades

Dr. Hourvouliades is currently an Associate Professor at ACT in Greece. He holds an MBA in international finance from Yale School of Management, USA, and a PhD on financial derivatives from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He teaches finance, investments and economics courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. He has published articles on international financial markets and portfolio management in peer reviewed articles and has presented his work in several multinational conferences. In the past he has also taught at the Alexander Institute of Thessaloniki as well as many private institutions including ICBS, New York College and IMESE in their domestic and international branches.

Dr. Hourvouliades is also active in the professional world. He currently serves as the Special Advisor of the Governor of North Greece, specializing in European programs, tourism, economics and growth issues. He also has more than 15 years of executive management experience. He has been vice-president and CEO at Souroti Mineral Water Company (the market leader in mineral water) as well as head of Marfin private banking for high net-worth customers. He has held executive positions in private banking and asset management companies and has served as a financial consultant in big manufacturing and consulting companies. Finally, he also organizes and performs training sessions of employees for organizations across the Balkans.

Dr. Miroslav Lutovac

Miroslav Lutovac is a Corresponding Member of Academy of Engineering Sciences of Serbia (AESS). He took his B.Sc. M.Sc., and D.Sc. degrees at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia. He is a Professor at Singidunum University, Belgrade: Department of Industrial Management, Department of Business in Belgrade, and Lincoln University. He has more than 200 published papers that are cited in referent journals and textbook Fields of research are in E-business and management and Computer and information science. He has published a university textbook on E-business, two college textbooks (Business plan for e business, Electronic business - basics), and three practicums (Electronic commerce, Electronic business - basics, Business plan for e business). His project “New software turning algorithms into implementation” was granted by Central European Initiative (CEI), framework “From Research to Enterprise.” His software product SchematicSolver - Symbolic Signal Processing is distributed by Wolfram Research, Inc., USA.

Dr. Victor Simoncic

Dr. Victor Simoncic was born in Ljubljana in 1948. He graduated from the Faculty of Technology, University of Zagreb, department of petroleum and petrochemicals in Sisak (1970) and PhD from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, University of Karlsruhe, Germany (1976).

Dr. Simoncic is professionally engaged in protecting the environment from the late seventies and in 1980 he was elected as assistant professor of environmental protection at the Faculty of Metallurgy at University of Zagreb.

In his professional career he worked in different areas - research and teaching (University of Karlsruhe, Germany and University of Zagreb), industry (Institute of Metallurgy in Sisak), business (Ingra, Zagreb), Government (Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of Croatia, head of the State Administration for Environmental Protection and advisor in the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Slovenia) and independent consultants (Visok, Sisak and Sivicon, Ljubljana). Among other things, he worked as an adviser to the World Bank. He is involved in many projects funded by the European Commission.

His main focus is on the development of strategic documents related to environmental protection in different countries and at different levels, including local communities. He has published several scientific papers and co-author of several books and publications.

Assoc. prof. Rositsa Hristova Koleva, Ph.D.

Born on 4th April 1968 in the town of Byala, district of Rousse, Republic of Bulgaria. In 1992 she graduated “D. A. Tsenov” Academy of Economics – Svishtov. In 1995 she was appointed as lecturer in Economic Analysis at the Academy. In 2006 she defended a dissertation entitled “Problems of capital efficiency analysis (for enterprises of the pharmaceutical sub-sector)” and since 2010 she has been an associate professor at the department “Control and analysis of economic activity”. She is also a secretary of the MA programme in “Financial analysis and control” and a member of the Academic Council. She is the author of over 40 publications in the sphere of financial analysis. Married with two children.