Rafael
Makrigiorgis.

Senior Software Engineer / Co-Founder / AI Researcher

From aerial intelligence to sustainable startups - I build things that matter.

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Rafael Makrigiorgis
9
Publications · IEEE / CVF / Springer
2
Companies Co-Founded
8+
Years · Research → Production
A1/A2/A3
EASA Drone Pilot Licence

Bridging deep research and shipping product.

I'm a Senior Software Engineer and Co-Founder with an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus. My career has moved through cutting-edge research in computer vision and UAV-based AI at KIOS Research CoE, full-stack production web development, fintech mobile engineering, and co-founding two companies of my own.

I co-founded Fooderloo - a sustainability-driven startup tackling food waste - and Ace & Zeros, a software consulting agency where I serve as CTO. I bridge deep academic research with hands-on delivery, having contributed to 9 peer-reviewed publications across IEEE, CVF, Springer, and NVIDIA.

I care about craft. I like systems that ship, code that other engineers want to read, and research that meets the real world.

Six roles. Research, agency, fintech, startup.

Software Engineer · Philoshopic

Jun 2025 - Present retail · mobile
  • Developing and maintaining retail-focused digital products.
  • Cross-platform mobile applications using Ionic / Angular and frontend in Angular.
  • Robust backend services built with Java.

Senior Full-Stack Developer · SiliconDali

Feb - May 2025 fintech · react native
  • Developed a fintech application for mobile and web using React Native.
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams on system architecture and high-quality feature delivery.

Senior Software Web Developer · Expertum

Apr 2023 - Feb 2025 full-stack web
  • Production-level web apps as a full-stack developer; stack: Laravel (PHP) + Vue.js / TypeScript.
  • Built a Node.js / TypeScript web-scraping tool using Puppeteer and Cheerio.

Co-Founder · Fooderloo

Oct 2021 - Present startup · sustainability
  • Co-founded a mobile app combating food waste - connecting consumers with surplus food at reduced cost.
  • Full-stack: Flutter (Dart) frontend, Laravel (PHP) backend; live on Android and iOS.

Software Engineer I · KIOS Research & Innovation CoE

Nov 2018 - Mar 2023 research · AI · computer vision
  • Researched state-of-the-art Computer Vision and CNN solutions for project-specific UAV needs.
  • Frameworks: Darknet, PyTorch, TensorFlow · Languages: Python, C++.
  • Implemented AI algorithms on embedded NVIDIA Jetson devices for UAV applications.

IT Support Assistant · University of Cyprus

Nov 2017 - Nov 2018 IT support
  • Formatted and installed software in university labs; imaging via Acronis / Clonezilla over disk and network.
// Spotlight
Co-Founder · CTO

A digital software consulting agency I co-founded with Marios Pafitis (CEO). Tagline: "Turning your Ideas into Aces and Zeros" - bridging creativity and execution to transform ideas into robust, functional digital technologies.

I lead technology strategy, system architecture, and research-based solution design - bringing computer vision and ML expertise into client engagements.

Visit aceandzeros.com

CTO as a Service

Strategic technology leadership for businesses and startups - strategy, roadmaps, team mentorship, and scaling from MVP to full deployment.

Custom Software Development

Bespoke software built for unique business needs - flexible, scalable, performant. Full lifecycle support from concept to deployment to ongoing maintenance.

Cloud Integration & AI Solutions

Cloud infrastructure migration plus data-driven AI for process automation and actionable insights - mobile-friendly and device-agnostic by design.

Tooling I reach for.

Strong on the frontend → backend → ML edge. Comfortable shipping production web and mobile, while drawing on years of research in computer vision and edge AI.

/01 Languages
Python TypeScript JavaScript PHP Dart Java C / C++ SQL HTML / CSS / SCSS
/02 Frontend
Vue.js React Native Angular Ionic Flutter Next.js WordPress
/03 Backend & Infrastructure
Laravel Node.js Django FastAPI Next.js Redis Docker Linux
/04 AI & Computer Vision
PyTorch TensorFlow Darknet YOLO v5/v7 OpenCV CNNs Object Detection Tracking Kalman / Hungarian ROS NVIDIA Jetson

Things I've built and shipped.

A mix of co-founded products, autonomous drone systems, and CV/AI research artefacts. Status badges indicate active production use.

Live Oct 2021 - Present

Fooderloo

An innovative mobile application combating food waste - connecting consumers, restaurants, and grocery stores to transform surplus into savings, available on Android & iOS at up to 50% below market price.

{ role: "Co-Founder & Full-Stack" }
stack: Flutter · Laravel · MySQL
markets: Cyprus · expanding
impact: less waste · more savings
Flutter Dart Laravel PHP MySQL iOS · Android Sustainability
How it works. Consumers browse discounted groceries, prepared meals, and non-food items at up to 50% below market price; the platform also supports C2C resale and exchange. Businesses list surplus inventory effortlessly, reach a broader audience, and recover costs from excess stock.
Impact. Reduces food waste and the carbon footprint of surplus disposal; consumers save money; businesses recover cost from excess stock; charities gain access to resources.
Completed 2022 - 2023

ORION - Counter-Drone System

Autonomous counter-drone system: AI detection & tracking of rogue drones, RF jamming, GPS disruption, and SDR-based self-localisation. IEEE Communications Society Student Competition.

UAV SDR RF YOLO IEEE
Completed 2018 - 2023 · KIOS

AIDERS - Emergency Response Mapping

Multi-sensor RPAS mapping platform for first responders. Implemented CV / DL algorithms to detect moving targets and visualise GPS locations within the platform.

CV LIDAR Thermal RPAS
Completed 2018 - 2022

Harpy - UAV Traffic Monitoring

Extracts traffic monitoring data from aerial UAV footage using YOLO + OpenCV; Kalman + Hungarian algorithms match detections to reconstruct vehicle trajectories and velocities.

YOLO OpenCV Kalman Hungarian
Completed 2020 - 2021

ICARUS - Power Infrastructure Inspection

Drone-based autonomous AI toolkit to detect, track, and identify power infrastructure components (poles, insulators, lines). My Galileo Drone semi-finalist.

UAV CNN Detection Power Grid
Live May 2019

Absences App - MSc Thesis

Automated absence and test management system for a private high school. Real-time submissions via mobile + admin web platform. Still in active production use.

Ionic Angular C# iOS · Android
Completed KIOS

RPS - Relative Positioning

Relative positioning system for GNSS-challenged environments - explores signals across a large frequency spectrum to estimate trajectories without prior reference knowledge.

SDR GNSS-free SoO EKF
Completed May 2017

Conference App - BSc Thesis

Event & conference Android app paired with a custom web dashboard. Browse and evaluate events; admins import data and export evaluation analytics.

Android Java PHP SQL

Nine peer-reviewed papers.

Across IEEE, CVF, Springer Nature, NVIDIA GTC, and arXiv. Topics: aerial vision, edge AI on UAVs, counter-drone systems, GNSS-free positioning, and traffic flow analysis.

Springer · 2023

Efficient Deep Vision for Aerial Visual Understanding

Makrigiorgis R., Siddiqui S., Kyrkou C., Theocharides T.

Surveys key techniques for making deep vision more efficient in resource-constrained UAV applications: data selection, efficient neural network design, and hardware-oriented model optimisation.

Springer
NVIDIA · 2023

Expediting Autonomous Drone-Based Power Infrastructure Inspection with Edge AI

Savva A., Makrigiorgis R., Georgiades C., Kolios P., Kyrkou C.

Vision-based AI toolkit on NVIDIA Jetson detecting power poles in real time, integrated with the UAV flight controller; field-validated over ~3.5 km of medium-voltage network.

NVIDIA GTC
CVF · WACV 2022

AirCamRTM: Enhancing Vehicle Detection for Efficient Aerial Camera-Based Road Traffic Monitoring

Makrigiorgis R., Hadjittoouli N., Kyrkou C., Theocharides T.

Combines road segmentation with vehicle detection - ~2× faster monitoring and ~18% accuracy improvement over road-agnostic baselines. Validated on real UAV setups.

CVF IEEE
IEEE · ICUAS 2021

Hyperion: A Robust Drone-based Target Tracking System

Anastasiou A., Makrigiorgis R., Kolios P., Panayiotou C.

Robust target tracking from drone platforms leveraging advances in mobile and embedded computing for unmanned aerial systems.

IEEE
IEEE · ICUAS 2021

Real-Time Relative Positioning System Using Signals of Opportunity, Inertial & Optical Flow

Souli N., Makrigiorgis R., Kolios P., Ellinas G.

Real-time OF-RPS fusing Signals of Opportunity, inertial, and optical flow data for positioning in GNSS-denied environments - Extended Kalman Filter + Frequency Selection Algorithm.

IEEE
IEEE · ICUAS 2021

ICARUS: Automatic Autonomous Power Infrastructure Inspection with UAVs

Savva A., Zacharia A., Makrigiorgis R., Anastasiou A., Kyrkou C., Kolios P., Panayiotou C., Theocharides T.

UAV-based platform automating detection, tracking, and identification of power components; generates digital surface models and identifies insulator conditions and vegetation hazards.

IEEE
IEEE · VTC 2021

Cooperative Relative Positioning using Signals of Opportunity and Inertial & Visual Modalities

Souli N., Makrigiorgis R., Kolios P., Ellinas G.

Cooperative RPS fusing SoOPs + IMU + camera for real-time GNSS-free localisation; Frequency Selection Algorithm reduces computational load from wide-spectrum scanning.

IEEE
IEEE · ICUAS 2020

HorizonBlock: Implementation of an Autonomous Counter-Drone System

Souli N., Makrigiorgis R., Anastasiou A., Petrides P., Zacharia A., Lazanas A., Valianti P., Kolios P., Ellinas G.

Fully autonomous aerial counter-drone system: detects, tracks, and jams a rogue drone while self-localising via Signals of Opportunity. Addresses safety of critical infrastructure.

IEEE
arXiv · 2020

Extracting the Fundamental Diagram from Aerial Footage

Makrigiorgis R., Kolios P., Timotheou S., Theocharides T., Panayiotou C.G.

Three-phase pipeline (vehicle detection → tracking → traffic state estimation) extracts the fundamental diagram from drone aerial footage; validated against GPS traces and OBD measurements.

arXiv IEEE

Repositories & tutorials.

Mostly Python - YOLO tooling, dataset preparation, and tutorials around aerial CV.

rafcy / HarpyTM

Traffic monitoring from aerial UAV footage - YOLO + OpenCV with Kalman + Hungarian tracking.

Python
rafcy / ieee_drone_ai_2022

YOLOv7 tutorial: install, prep custom datasets, train, evaluate, and run inference on images and video.

Python · Colab
rafcy / yolo_detect_demo

Standalone object detection app using OpenCV + YOLO. README provides full usage instructions.

Python
rafcy / yolo_detect_labeling

Pseudo-labelling extension of the detection demo - auto-extracts YOLO-format annotations from detections.

Python
rafcy / object-detection-data-prep

Utility for preparing object-detection datasets: train/val/test splits and conversions to VOC and COCO formats.

Python
All repositories →
github.com/rafcy

Let's build something.

Open to senior engineering work, technical advisory, and Ace & Zeros engagements. The best way to reach me is email.

linkedin /in/rafael-makrigiorgis location Nicosia, Cyprus