Sotirios Tsaftaris

1. What does innovation mean to you?

I would say the ability to overcome a barrier in a problem that is important to at least more than one person.

2. What book do you recommend to others?

I do love, biographies. One of the first ones I read was by Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, when I was in high school. Since then, I have kept reading, one biography per year of somebody famous or non-famous. The thing that fascinates me with them is to see how they faced failure in life, adversity, and how this adversity and failure created perseverance and made them successes. So, that we want to read the biography.

3. If you had one more hour in the day how would you spend it?

Maybe, listening to music, reading another book, or spending time with my family.

4. What would your friend say your greatest strengths and weaknesses are?

Friends will say that my biggest strength is to be able to strike up a conversation with anybody about anything, within an instance. Another friend will say that I have the ability to get people and organise them together. Weaknesses? I don't think a lot of my friends understand. They consider that I whine, and I complain, but they don't understand. That's my way of building rapport.

5. What has been your biggest success?

I think the biggest success is trying to find how to balance a fruitful and successful career together with being able to have a family and being a good partner. 

6. What failure has helped shape you? 

I would say that several failures happened throughout my life and career path. Most of them, I felt were not in my control. and what I quickly realised, and understood that  failure, sometimes is outside of your control. And how do you build the emotional stability, the perseverance and how do you pick up the pieces of yourself and move forward to turn potential failure into persistence?

7. What scares you?

Climate change and how little we do to address it and solve it. Also, the general distrust around scientific inquiry in the sciences of the times and how these will affect us doing something for climate change.

8. What future innovation would you like to see happen in your lifetime?

I think it relates to the fact that I don't take care of myself. Maybe the ability to monitor and estimate my health at home. On a daily basis in a non-invasive manner.

9. What gives you hope?

That's very easy, my children.

10. What piece of advice has stuck with you?

Don't worry about what happens now. Just be ready so that when an opportunity comes, you're ready to grasp it.