The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas was fοunded in March 2000, it is a legal entity governed by private law with non-profit status, supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation (GSRI) of the Greek Ministry of Development. CERTH suggests one of the most important Research Centers in Greece with a main mission: The promotion of innovative research for the benefit of society. Dedicated to this purpose, CERTH lies at the forefront of basic, applied and technological research to provide solutions to society’s modern challenges.
Clean energy, low/zero CO2 emission technologies, clean vehicle technologies, green hydrogen, climate change, artificial intelligence, advanced robotic systems, the internet of things, Industry 4.0, smart home infrastructure for the future, precision medicine, holistic health nutrition, holistic health-nutrition approach, autonomous vehicles, driving simulators, traffic control hubs, smart cities, precision agriculture, agro-robotics and circular economy, are the primal fields around which CERTH’s five (5) institutes are organized. Chemical Process & Energy Resources Institute - CPERI, Information Technologies Institute - ITI, Hellenic Institute of Transport - HIT, Institute of Applied Biosciences - INAB, and Bio-economy and Agro-Technology Institute - IBO, bring together more than 1600 people (engineers and scientists in their majority), in 7 regions and 9 cities of Greece.
CERTH combines its unique research facilities and high qualified research personnel, to transform scientific knowledge into innovative technological applications, aiming to strength the national economy and respond to the needs of society at national and international level. CERTH is essentially a self-supported Research Centre generating an average annual turnover of more than 63 million euros (threee [3]-year average) coming from: competitive research projects at 80% bilateral industrial research contracts at 13%, and government institutional funding at 7%, proving its essentially self-supported operating model.
It is one of the top research and development employers for highly qualified personnel in the region of Northern Greece, playing an important role in the creation of highly skilled jobs, which is demonstrated by the qualitative and quantitative increase of its staff in recent years.
CERTH places a strong emphasis on innovation, which is demonstrated -among others- by the establishing collaborations with the industry. The commercial exploitation of the mature, innovative, technological findings of CERTH, has led to the creation of 23 spin-off companies with significant economic activity, including the attraction of financing from investment funds.
The biggest development project of the Research Centre, which concludes its development strategy, is CERTH 2.0 - Research Excellence for Society and Economy, with funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) - a budget of 33,87 million euros. The project aims at the broad and long-term upgrading of CERTH with the development of state – of the art infrastructure.
CERTH dynamically participates at the same time, in the creation of the 4th generation Science and Technology Park-Thess INTEC, having a leading role in the management of the MegaProjects of Artificial Intelligence, Clean Energy, Sustainable Industry and Smart Logistics.