Program Spotlight
Lab to Market: Bridging Innovation and Entrepreneurship
How can a partnership between Columbia University, the National Technical University of Athens, and Greece’s innovation ecosystem help turn new ideas into new businesses?
Athens
Where heritage meets new horizons.
At the crossroads of ancient wisdom and contemporary inquiry, Columbia Global’s Center in Athens is emerging as a hub for research, learning, and collaboration across Greece and the Mediterranean.
As we establish our permanent home, the Athens Center's work is already unfolding throughout the city: in classrooms, cultural institutions, and community spaces that reflect Athens’s dynamic and creative energy. The Center is testing and creating programs that connect Columbia with Greek institutions in shared pursuit of knowledge and impact.
Athens offers an unparalleled setting for dialogue across disciplines. Here, Columbia scholars collaborate with Greek and regional partners on themes such as democracy and governance, migration, public health, the arts, and sustainability — issues that resonate both locally and globally.
Programs
News and Events
Center Director
Stefanos Gandolfo
Stefanos Gandolfo has been the director of Columbia Global Center Athens since June 2024. Previously he was employed at the Office of the Prime Minister of Greece where he worked as a special advisor to the Minister of State responsible for the government’s policy on disabilities. In that role, he led the drafting of the National Strategy for the Rights of People with Disabilities, 2024-2030, and coordinated the streamlining of key reforms including the national accessibility sign and data collection on disability. Prior to that, he spent more than two years in the Ministry of Education in Greece where as chief of policy he spearheaded efforts to forge global partnerships with universities from around the world and was instrumental in implementing key reforms in primary and secondary education.
