Today we headed back to UNic to have a couple lectures. To start we began with the CEO of UNic, Antonis Polemitis, and his lecture about blockchain technology. Compared to other colleges, UNic is said to be the leader worldwide with knowledge about blockchain and cryptocurrency so I was excited to learn about these topics. Within his lecture, we learned the basics of blockchain and crypto and why each would be beneficial. At the end of his lecture, he gave us an example of a time in his life when crypto was useful which was very interesting to hear about.

After this lecture, we heard from Professor Spyros Makrydakis about Forecasting and how it’s important regarding the supply chain. Professor Spyros highlighted the evolution of forecasting and how the models it uses to accurately predict certain aspects of business have changed. I found this lecture particularly interesting as it directly related to business and shows that even though these forecasting methods are very accurate, they can’t predict everything. This was made apparent after certain models were shown pre-covid and the actual impacts.

We then heard from Dr. Demetris Trinihas about data science. We learned that data mining is the extraction of patterns from data that isn’t surface-level. We also learned about machine learning and its usefulness to the supply chain.

After our lectures, we went over to the UNic Pharmacy labs to get some insight from some of the doctors there. My group began by learning about peptides and how they are being manipulated and studied there to make drugs that are personalized toward the certain patient. We learned the usefulness behind this when it specifically comes to Type II Diabetes. After this, we saw how certain pill capsules were manufactured. When the pills are manufactured there is an extensive process of testing afterwards to make sure the pill is up to standards. Some of these tests include how quickly the pills dissolve and how hard they are. Overall this was very insightful and I wouldn’t really have expected all of these tests to occur before they are put on a shelf in a store.