Latest news with #Marios
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Omilia Appoints Marios Fakiolas as Chief Technology Officer to Accelerate AI-Native Innovation
ATHENS, Greece--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Omilia, a global leader in enterprise conversational AI, proudly announces the appointment of Marios Fakiolas as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Marios returns to Omilia at a pivotal time to lead the company's next phase of technological innovation and drive its transformation into an AI-first organization. With a career spanning more than 20 years across defense, software engineering, enterprise software, and AI startups, Marios brings a unique combination of deep technical expertise and executive leadership. He first joined Omilia in 2017 holding senior technical roles and was instrumental in shaping the company's early voice-first AI capabilities. In 2021, Marios founded HelloWorld PC, a boutique tech firm focused on AI and modern engineering practices. As CEO, he scaled HelloWorld into a trusted innovation partner delivering next-generation AI solutions across sectors. Now, he returns to Omilia with a bold vision for the future. 'I'm thrilled to return to Omilia at an exciting moment in the evolution of Conversational AI,' said Marios Fakiolas, CTO of Omilia. 'We are moving beyond bots into intelligent, agentic systems that understand context, adapt in real time, and deliver real business outcomes. My mission is to drive the agentic transformation of our products, reimagine our platform architecture, and empower our teams to innovate fearlessly. Together, we'll redefine what enterprise-grade AI can achieve.' Marios will report to Dimiris Vassos, Omilia's Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, who leads the company's end-to-end product vision and strategy. 'Marios is a visionary thinker with battle-tested engineering leadership and a relentless focus on customer impact,' said Vassos. 'His previous work with AI-native architectures and proven ability to scale high-performance teams positions him well to lead us into the next era of Conversational AI. I'm excited to partner with Marios as we reshape the future of enterprise interactions.' Omilia's technology roadmap under Marios will be anchored on four key pillars: AI-driven engineering, cloud-native data flywheel architecture, end-to-end GenAI integration, and Agentic AI for Customer Service. His leadership signals Omilia's commitment to staying at the forefront of enterprise AI innovation, with a sharp focus on trust, scalability, and business value. About Omilia Omilia is the global standard for AI-driven customer service transformation. Our native Conversational AI platform revolutionizes how enterprises engage with customers - automating interactions with precision, empowering agents in real time, and delivering seamless, personalized experiences across all channels. Powered by deep expertise in developing proprietary Agentic AI technology, and multi-layered anti-fraud capabilities, we enable enterprises to move decisively and safely into the era of AI-first contact centers. Omilia's Unified Agentic AI learns from across the entire customer journey - from self-service to live agent interactions - unlocking continuous improvement and breaking the 'glass ceiling' of containment that legacy siloed models can't achieve. Trusted by the world's most demanding enterprises and built on over two decades of AI innovation, Omilia delivers measurable outcomes: lower costs, higher efficiency, and unmatched customer satisfaction - all while preserving the human touch where it matters most.
Daily Mirror
12-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Livesaving breakthrough could see smartphones used in breast cancer checks
MammoCheck, a specialised scanning device, could soon allow women to check for lumps using their smartphones instead of checking their breasts for cancer by touch alone Breast cancer survival rates could be improved by allowing women to check themselves with their smartphone, experts say. Experts behind a new MammoCheck scanning device say its thermal imaging camera could be three times more effective than women self examining their breasts by touch alone. The technology, which provides results within minutes, works because skin over breast tumours is slightly warmer than surrounding tissue. The camera, likely to cost a few hundred pounds, attaches to the top of a smartphone and could be available in two years. It is the brainchild of computer scientist Marios Pafitis, an expert in artificial intelligence (AI), which the device uses to analyse the images and indicate if a woman should go to her GP for further tests. Marios told the Mirror: 'Up until now there have only been expensive thermal cameras in hospitals. Now we have more affordable technology and we can bring it into the house so every woman could have access to early diagnosis, which could save lives.' Thermal breast imaging has been around since the 1960s but it was traditionally felt to produce too many false positives. However MammoCheck's machine learning programme has been able to improve this using its AI algorithm trained on publicly available databases of thermal breast cancer photos. The device is currently in clinical trials with four hospitals in Cyprus, including St George's Hospital and Medical School in Paphos, which is attached to St George's, University of London. Manufacturers are in talks with more UK universities about expanding the trial to participants based in Scotland. READ MORE: 'I'm a man and people wouldn't believe I had breast cancer, including my GP' If shown to work, MammoCheck will be made available in Britain costing between £100 and £300 for the device, plus an annual subscription of around £30 to analyse the results. The NHS advises women to regularly check their breasts for any changes that could be a sign of cancer. This involves looking and feeling for any lumps, thickening, or other changes in the breast tissue or armpits. The NHS currently invites women aged 50 to 70 for routine breast cancer mammograms every three years. Marios said: 'We're not replacing mammograms but this is just another piece in the puzzle replacing the breast self-examination. The issue with breast examination is that you really need to be trained to do it correctly. Our early results show this could be almost three times more accurate than breast self-examination.' Trials of the MammoCheck will conclude later this year and the device could get regulatory approval to be sold privately in Britain 18 months later. Marios said the thermal scanner can be particularly effective for women with dense breasts - for whom mammograms do not work as well - and for those with breast implants. It could also be an option to provide peace of mind for women at higher genetic risk of breast cancer. Marios added: 'For women that are under 50 and not screened it's an accurate way to monitor for breast cancer. And women who do qualify for screening it's a good way to check yourself in between your mammograms every three years. If there are any concerns it will produce a full report and they can take it to their GP.' Sally Kum, director at charity Breast Cancer Now, said: 'We recognise the exciting promise that innovative ways to better detect breast cancer bring. But what we know right now is that thermal imaging techniques are not more reliable than mammograms at detecting breast cancer and so they're not routinely used. 'We currently lack any published data on the MammoCheck device that is evidence to back up claims of its effectiveness. As such we look forward to the reporting of the MammoCheck trials concluding later this year. 'We want every woman to know that along with attending NHS breast screening when invited, regular breast checking – including in between screening appointments - is crucial in helping to detect any new or unusual breast changes. 'Around two thirds of breast cancers in England are found when women detect a new or unusual breast change and get this checked out by a GP. And the earlier breast cancer is diagnosed, the better the chance of successful treatment, and lives potentially being saved from the disease. 'There's no special way to check your breasts and you do not need any training. It's as simple as Breast Cancer Now's TLC: touch, look, check. It's all about getting to know your normal. And we're here to help women feel confident in recognising the different signs and symptoms of breast cancer.'
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why a16z's ‘speedrun' accelerator is playing a new game
The term "speedrun" is usually reserved for Super Mario. "In games, a speedrun is a runthrough where you try to beat the game as fast as you possibly can," said Josh Lu, principal at Andreessen Horowitz. "A canonical example is Super Mario Brothers, where there's a set number of levels and you have to beat them all as fast as you can. You don't get extra credit for getting more coins, larger Marios, flower Marios. You just get credit for how quickly you beat the game." And, in startups, certain principles of this can apply. "Speed really matters in early-stage startups, the speed by which teams execute, the speed by which they answer the important questions," said Lu. "Can you get to product-market fit? Do you know your audience? Are you able to hire great people to fill out your team? Speed matters." Lu helps run a16z speedrun, an accelerator the firm started in 2023 in San Francisco and Los Angeles to focus on games. Since its founding, speedrun has backed more than 120 companies and, this week, the accelerator opened applications for its 5th LA cohort, bumping up investment per company to $1 million from $750,000. For the last cohort, more than 6,000 companies applied, but only around 40 were accepted, marking an acceptance rate of slightly less than 1%. I'd been seeing a16z speedrun all over social media over the last year, so when they offered Fortune an exclusive look at the accelerator at a key moment, we said yes—this March, speedrun expanded its mission to focus more broadly on "the intersection of tech and sort of entertainment," said Lu. "We think games are at the heart of a lot of entertainment, and what makes games special are the same things at the heart of entertainment experiences," he told Fortune. "These are all things that cause people to feel, to play with each other, to evoke emotion. We consistently saw that the best game-makers were just really great storytellers." So far, a16z has deployed more than $100 million in capital towards speedrun—to be sure, that's small by a16z standards: Per its latest SEC filing, a16z has about $74.74 billion in assets under management. Still, $100 million over a short time has been used to back a striking variety of companies, including online child safety startup k-ID, content creation platform Hedra, Echo Chess maker Echo Chunk, and AI consumer company Dream Voyage. The accelerator also has previously backed various blockchain-based companies, like Voldex and Mythical Games, and now's a time when crypto is very "in" in Washington, as is a16z itself. "When we select a company, that's our belief in the ability of the team to build something really great," said Lu. "If we tried to over-rotate towards where we think policy is going, we have less visibility on that and it's not part of our process." Coco Chen, cofounder and CEO at Dream Voyage, was part of the second speedrun cohort, and said she wanted to be around other people specifically building in consumer. "I haven't done any other accelerator so it's hard to say, but as I've talked to friends who've been through others, I think the programming seems similar—other programs have, say, a weekly speaker session," said Chen. "But I do think the network is different. When I hang out with my friends who work in B2B SaaS they care about different things, like long sale cycles and finding key decision makers. When people build games for consumers, they ask different questions." Sami Ramly, founder and CEO at Echo Chess, was in the third speedrun cohort, and says that he still uses key things he learned, in a way that actually all ties back to the accelerator's name. "I had this preconception that when you speedrun through something, there are fundamental prerequisites, like facing the exact same challenge 1,000 times before you finally speed through it," said Ramly. "That's speedruns in the game world. And I think it's a great metaphor, but doesn't fully do the program justice. What I've learned is that speedrunning isn't just about improvement, practice, or repetition, that you can learn to separate good insights from a pattern of success, without having to go through them 1,000 times." See you tomorrow, Allie GarfinkleX: @agarfinksEmail: a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here. Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today's newsletter. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on
