A group of students from Ioannina won the first place in the national space competition Cansat in Greece and will represent our country in the pan-European competition that will take place in June 2018.

Eleven students from general high schools in the city and two teachers who worked with them to create a small satellite the size of a soda can, but with great technological potential.

The team includes 9 students from the 7th Lyceum of Ioannina, one student from Zosimaia and one student from the 9th High School of Ioannina.

Professor George Skariotis, who worked with the students, said the effort started last year at the first event for Greece. As he said, when they decided to participate they did not know the difficulties, as well as how demanding the project is, since it requires a lot of knowledge and a combination of scientific fields. “We were learning together with the children,” continued Mr. Skariotis saying that this year they knew what they would face and turned to qualified scientists.

“Last year, after the 3rd place we won, the team was better organized, worked much harder and that’s how we reached this success. We are very proud and happy about this and at the same time full of responsibility, so that we succeed in representing our country as best as possible in the European Competition”, Mr. Skargiotis and added:

“We thank from the bottom of our hearts the organizers and volunteers of the event in Athens, but also those who have supported us so far, providing us with the knowledge and resources to make it happen.

So a big thank you to Panagiotis Triantafyllou, an electronics engineer at the Department of Physics of the University of Ioannina”.

The effort of the students and teachers was supported by the Cooperative Bank of Epirus, the Region and the municipality of Ioannina.

Angeliki Foteinou, regional director of Education, stressed that “the work is important, it is great technically, because they built a satellite and deserve congratulations to students and teachers”, while she did not fail to give credit to the Preveza School of Education, which in the same competition won 3rd place.