Theodore Antonakopoulos was born in Patras, Greece in 1962. In 1979 he joined the Hellenic Air Force Academy (HAFA), Department of Engineering, where he studied for two years. He continued his studies in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Patras, Greece, and in July 1985, he received the Diploma of Electrical Engineering.

In September 1985, he started his postgraduate studies, in Computer Communication Networks, in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Patras, Greece, wherein he joined the research staff, initially as a Research Associate. He actively participated in R&D projects, with fields of interest varying from the development of local area communication networks, to the study of information processing systems. In April 1989 he received his Ph.D. with honours, publishing his dissertation entitled: Development and Design of a Data Processing Unit for a High-Speed Multiservice Local Area Network . Since 1991, he has been on the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Patras, Greece, where he is currently a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Electrotechnics.
Prof. Antonakopoulos is also leading the Communications and Embedded Systems (COMES) Group, with research focusing on the following areas: development of data communication devices and local area and wireless networks, with emphasis on efficient hardware implementation and rapid prototyping. The research activities evolve as part of European Union Research Projects (ACTS & ESPRIT R&D projects e.g. LION, DISTIMA, PANORAMA, COBUCO etc.), as well as part of Research and Development Programs, funded by the Greek government and European industries. During this period, Prof. Antonakopoulos had the opportunity to develop collaborations with international organizations and companies such as: TITN-ALCATEL (France), SIEMENS (Germany), GMD-FOKUS (Germany), FEL-TNO (The Netherlands), ATMEL (USA), IBM (Switzerland) etc.

In 1995-96 he spent his sabbatical year in Research Triangle Institute (RTI), North Carolina, USA, where he was involved in hardware development for multi-processing in mobile communications. In 2001-2002 he spent his sabbatical year in IBM Research Laboratory (IBM-ZRL) in Zurich, Switzerland, where he was involved in hardware development for probe-based storage devices. He has published over 110 scientific papers. He participated in numerous conferences in Greece and abroad, sometimes as a member of the organizing committee. Since 1999, he is a Senior member of IEEE, participates in several Societies of the IEEE (AES, COM, CCS, IM, CE etc.) and is a member of the Greek Technical Chamber.