Prof. Soulla Louca
Head of the Department of Digital Innovation and Director of the Institute for the Future, University of Nicosia
Prof. Soulla Louca has been nominated by LATTICE80 in partnership with Miss Kaya as one of the top 100 women in Fintech for 2019. In October 2022, she was elected as the Chair of the bloxberg Association (www.bloxberg.org), a consortium for blockchain science that comprises more than 55 universities worldwide. She is one of the first academics to get involved in blockchain technologies (2014) when she assumed the responsibility of the Blockchain Initiative at the University of Nicosia. The Blockchain Initiative (renamed later to Institute For the Future) has designed and developed the first MSc worldwide in Digital Currency, the technology for publishing academic certificates on the blockchain. For seven years, Prof. Louca also headed the Domain Committee for ICT for the European program COST, where she evaluated and monitored ICT actions for more than 3,000 researchers in various areas such as e-Society, Information Security, Networks, and Nanotechnologies. In this role, she identified trends, boosted pioneering research activities, and helped define strategies in science and technology for promoting ICT policy in Europe and beyond. Although her research interests initially focused on the socio-economic aspects of ICT, e-learning, social integration, and digital divide, her COST activities allowed her to broaden her knowledge and work in areas such as personalized medicine, women in ICT, and open access. Prof. Louca's wide range of experience enables her to integrate her knowledge into a consistent worldview and work towards raising the standard of living for European citizens and beyond. Currently, she is the Head of the Department of Digital Innovation and a Director at the Institute for the Future at the University of Nicosia.
