It all began on an autumn evening in 1974, when the announcer on public radio (ERT) read the name Spyridon Kinnas, son of Athanasios (sixth from the top) on the list of students admitted to the School of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (NA&ME) at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). That was the last engineering department announced, and my anxiety had been immense, as I had not heard my name on any of the previously announced lists for the other departments (which I had listed with lower priority). I immediately leapt from my seat and threw myself onto a bed in the room, while my parents, weeping with joy, embraced and kissed me. Some neighbours in Peristeri, the suburb north-west of Athens where we lived, also came to congratulate me… The news spread quickly beyond our neighbourhood, and I received many wishes, handshakes and phone calls in the days that followed…

I still remember my first day at NTUA, trying to find the Large Amphitheatre of the Chemical Engineering building where the Advanced Mathematics course was offered. I made many new friends and greatly enjoyed the general courses of the first two years. I still remember Professor of Physics Dr. Anastassakis, when he mentioned that he had received his doctorate from the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)” — something I had never heard of before, even though I eventually ended up at that then-unknown-to-me university. As a joke, we used to refer to NTUA as “MIT = Metsovium Institute of Technology!”. Of course, we also had other humorous nicknames for certain professors, e.g. “The Grandfather” or “The Handsome One”, etc. Professor Emmanouel Protonotarios, who taught Electronic Networks, impressed me with his very sharp mind and his boundless kindness, and I appreciated the encouragement he gave me when he said: “You must focus on theory, Mr. Kinnas, as you are good at it…”.

In the middle of the third year, when we began many practical courses — especially those in which we had to use diagrams and tables without knowing where they came from — I had second thoughts about the NA&ME programme, and this led me to fall a year behind as I explored changing my field. Ultimately, thanks in particular to the encouragement of Professor Theodoros Loukakis, I realised that there were many interesting and innovative things to do in NA&ME. I spent countless hours coding at the computers next to the Towing Tank and Ship Model Basin at the Zografou campus, refining the methods I developed for my diploma thesis. At that time, many buildings were still under construction, and without remote access in those days, all my work had to be done on-site in an almost deserted campus. When I was admitted to MIT and asked to present my diploma thesis, my supervisor and other faculty members were impressed by my work on the development of a numerical method for handling unsteady flows around a hydrofoil, and this naturally greatly boosted my confidence in my abilities.

NTUA equipped me with the very solid foundation that helped me in my further studies and academic development. NTUA opened my eyes and gave me wings to fly…