Yiannis Laouris: Difference between revisions

       |period=2025-2026

       |role=[[ISSS President]]

       |current_post=SIG Chair: [[SIG: Systemic Dialogue]]

       |fields= Neurophysiology<br>Systems Engineering<br>Information Technology<br>Peace and Conflict Resolution<br>Education

       |universities=Leipzig University, Germany<br>University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

Silver Award Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies<br>

       |external_links=  https://www.linkedin.com/in/laouris/<br>https://www.futureworlds.eu/wiki/Yiannis_Laouris}}

'''Yiannis Laouris''' is the Lead Scientist and Chair of [[Future Worlds Center]] in Cyprus. He joined ISSS for the first time in 2004 during the Crete conference on the invitation of [[Kenneth Baush]] and [[Alexander Christakis]], where he presented [[Information technology in the service of peacebuilding: the case of Cyprus]]; peace and conflict work conducted in Cyprus between 1994 and 2004<ref>Laouris, Y. (2004). Information technology in the service of peacebuilding: the case of Cyprus. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 60(1-2), 67-79.</ref>. He and [[Marios Michaelides]], along with several Turkish speaking Cypriots, played a key role, as Member of the Cyprus Conflict Resolution Trainers Group<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Conflict_Resolution_Trainers_Group Cyprus Conflict Resolution Trainers</ref> in creating an embryonic peace movement using [[Interactive Management]] as introduced by [[Benjamin Broome]].  

Laouris was born in Paphos, Cyprus, in 1958. He attended The English School, the Pancyprian Gymnasium, and the Acropolis Gymnasium. He served in the Cypriot National Guard as the first Cypriot senior cryptographer after the 1974 Cypriot coup d'état and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. He graduated from the medical school of the Karl Marx University (today known as University of Leipzig), enjoying three parallel scholarships because of his top grades, and completed a PhD in Neurophysiology with summa cum laude with Prof. Peter Schwartze at the Carl Ludwig Institute of Physiology. Laouris and his wife Joulietta were the first students to be awarded a PhD before graduating from university, an achievement that received press coverage.<ref>Newspaper coverage of the Laouris' Doctorate, https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/Vitae/Yiannis_Laouris/Newspaper_coverage_of_the_Doctorate</ref> He continued his neurophysiology research at the Georg-August University Göttingen with cyberneticists and systems physiologists Professors Hans Diedrich Henatsch and Uwe Windhorst, studying the dynamic behavior of the motor axon-Renshaw cell, and muscle afferent subsystems. Laouris pioneered the application of digital signal processing in time/space and frequency domains. <ref>Laouris, Y., & Windhorst, U. (1989). The relationship between coherence and nonlinear characteristics in Renshaw cell responses to random motor axon stimulation. Neuroscience, 28(3), 625-633. https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4522(89)90009-2.</ref>,<ref>Cleveland, S., Ross, H.G. Dynamic properties of Renshaw cells: Frequency response characteristics. Biol. Cybernetics 27, 175–184 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00365164</ref>,<ref>Gottlieb, G. L., Corcos, D. M., & Agarwal, G. C. (1989). Strategies for the control of voluntary movements with one mechanical degree of freedom. Behavioral and brain sciences, 12(2), 189-210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00048238.</ref>. He subsequently joined the Robotics, Prosthetics, Motor Control Group at the University of Arizona, where he collaborated with Douglas G. Stuart developing neuromuscular-strategies for counteracting muscle fatigue<ref>Laouris, Y., & Stuart, D. G. (1993). Multiple neuromuscular-strategies for counteracting muscle fatigue. Neuromuscular fatigue. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 181-183.</ref> such as the effect of the stimulation pattern <ref>Bevan, L., Laouris, Y., Reinking, R. M., & Stuart, D. G. (1992). The effect of the stimulation pattern on the fatigue of single motor units in adult cats. The Journal of physiology, 449(1), 85-108. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1992.sp019076</ref>, motoneural adaptation<ref>Nordstrom, M. A., Gorman, R. B., Laouris, Y., Spielmann, J. M., & Stuart, D. G. (2007). Does motoneuron adaptation contribute to muscle fatigue?. Muscle & nerve, 35(2), 135-158. https://doi.org/10.1002/mus.20712</ref> etc. In the U.S., he also completed a Masters in Systems and Industrial Engineering. More recently, he completed a PhD in Systems Engineering at Portsmouth, UK<ref>https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/structured-dialogical-design-frameworks-for-addressing-complexity</ref>.

==Contributions in reforming education to the needs of the digital era==

In 1992, Laouris decided to devote a decade of his life to a vision he called CYBER KIDS.<ref>CYBER KIDS</ref> The project involved the development of a cybernetics-based innovative<ref>Laouris, Y. (2014). Teams construct knowledge during project-driven social interactions. Educating in Dialog: Constructing Meaning and Building Knowledge with Dialogic Technology, 24, 111-113.</ref>, team-, project based curriculum that was grounded on the concept of KnowledgePacket to construct lesson plans that required collaboration and comprised of multiple dimensions, including the value for real life, mental development, creativity, etc. By 1999, CYBER KIDS reached 15,000 children in Cyprus, i.e., 20% of the country’s youth population (ages 6–15) and contributed against brain drain by employing almost 200 young scientists. In 2005, Laouris founded the Cyprus Safer Internet Center<ref> Cyprus Safer Internet Center https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/Cyberethics:_Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Center</ref> to promote the safer use of internet across Europe. Yiannis is one of the twelve experts commissioned by the Digital Tasks Force of the EU to develop the ONLIFE Manifesto<ref>Floridi, L. (2015). The onlife manifesto: Being human in a hyperconnected era (p. 264). Springer Nature.</ref> <ref>Laouris presenting the ONLIFE Manifesto at the European parliament https://youtu.be/lWRW2sSqVGU</ref>.

==Contributions in Dialogic Design Science==

Yiannis promotes the application of broadband technologies and [[Structured Democratic Dialogue]] as tools to bridge the digital-, economic-, educational- and interpersonal divides on our planet. He is an international leader in the development of theory, methodology and tools to support the science of structured dialogic design. He formulated the dialogic design [[Law of Requisite Action]]<ref>Laouris Y, Laouri R, Christakis A (2008) Communication praxis for ethical accountability; The ethics of the tree of action. Syst Res Behav Sci 25(2):331–348. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.890.</ref>,<ref>Bausch, K. C., & Flanagan, T. R. (2013). A Confluence of Third‐Phase Science and Dialogic Design Science. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 30(4), 414-429, p 428. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2166.</ref>,<ref>Flanagan, T. R. (2021). Structured dialogic design for mobilizing collective action in highly complex systems. In Handbook of systems sciences (pp. 765-785). Singapore: Springer Singapore, p. 781. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0370-8_59-1.</ref>, <ref>Jones, P. (2020). Systemic design: Design for complex, social, and sociotechnical systems. In Handbook of systems sciences (pp. 787-811). Singapore: Springer Singapore., p. 804.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0720-5_60.</ref>, which asserts that action plans that are not founded on the authentic engagement of the stakeholders in dialogue and deliberation are unethical and are bound to fail. His current research focuses towards developing systems to enable scaling up participatory dialogic processes to engage thousands of people in meaningful, authentic dialogues asynchronously, thus accelerating institutional and societal change<ref>Laouris, Y., & Dye, K. (2024). Multi‐stakeholder structured dialogues: Five generations of evolution of dialogic design. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 41(2), 368-389. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2971</ref>,<ref>Laouris, Y., & Metcalf, G. (2025). Assessing the viability of virtual structured democratic dialogue. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 42(3), 587-606. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3006</ref>,<ref>Laouris, Y. (2023). Method to integrate asynchronously produced individual influence maps into an extrapolated population influence map following the face‐to‐face stage of a structured democratic dialogue. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 40(3), 437-450. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2877</ref>. His team has developed IdeaPrism<ref>IdeaPrism https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/IdeaPrism</ref>, Concertina<ref> Concertina  http://concertina.ekkotek.com/</ref>, Parallel ISM<ref> Parallel ISM https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/ISM_Parallel</ref>, Cogniscope v3<ref> Cogniscope Software https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/Cogniscope_Software </ref> and other tools. Laouris is also credited for establishing SDD as a [[Problem-Structuring Method]] within Community Operations research<ref>Laouris, Y., & Michaelides, M. (2018). Structured Democratic Dialogue: An application of a mathematical problem structuring method to facilitate reforms with local authorities in Cyprus. European Journal of Operational Research, 268(3), 918-931.</ref>,<ref>Midgley, G., Johnson, M. P., & Chichirau, G. (2018). What is community operational research?. European Journal of Operational Research, 268(3), 771-783, pg 772.</ref>,<ref>Johnson, M. P., Midgley, G., Wright, J., & Chichirau, G. (2018). Community Operational Research: Innovations, internationalization and agenda-setting applications. European Journal of Operational Research, 268(3), 761-770, pg 766, 771.</ref>,<ref>Júnior, A. D. A. G., & Schramm, V. B. (2021). Problem Structuring Methods: A Review of Advances Over the Last Decade. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 1-34, pgs 3,15</ref>.

Laouris has been rewarded for his scientific and societal contributions with several awards<ref>Honors and Awards of Yiannis Laouris https://futureworlds.eu/wiki/Vitae/Yiannis_Laouris/Honors_and_Awards</ref>. Selected distinctions include:

* 2011: Honorable Mention of the Anna Lindh Award to Future Worlds Center for promoting intercultural dialogue freedom and citizenship  

[[Category: Members]]

[[Category:ISSS Presidents]]