Varvara (Barbara) Kountouzi

Varvara Kountouzi is the Head of the Judith & William Bollinger Digital Fabrication Laboratory that provides fabrication services and poster printing and design services.  She holds an M.S.I.S. and M.L.S. from Drexel University, an Ms.Ed. from University of Pennsylvania and a Certificate in Business Essentials from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Varvara created, from scratch, and in a cost-effective manner, two new services which facilitate innovation in teaching, learning, research, and clinical care for the entire Penn community without barriers: scientific poster printing and 3D printing.  Under her leadership, the poster printing service has grown into an operation that prints more than 3,000 conference posters per year (under non-pandemic conditions!).  In 2019 she received honorable mention in Penn’s 2019 Models of Excellence Awards for creating the 3D printing service.

Varvara's passion is process implementation.  She loves taking complex processes, breaking them down, and streamlining them so that they can be performed by teams with multiple members and high turnover.  Her specialties include task automation, training and documentation, quality control, and unconventional, out-of-the-box solutions to practical problems.  Varvara takes pleasure in working with, and building teams that include members from a variety of cultural backgrounds.