George Kokkinakis was born in Chios, Greece. He received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering (Dipl.-Ing.), the Doctor's Degree in Engineering (Dr.-Ing) and the Diploma in Engineering Economics (Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing), all from the Technical University of Munich (Technische Hochschule Munchen).

 From 1969 he was with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Patras, where he organized and directed the Wire Communications Laboratory (WCL) till September 2004. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Head of the Electrical Engineering Department and Chairman of the Telecommunication and Information Technology Division. His activity in research and development coincided with that of WCL, including the analysis, synthesis recognition and linguistic processing of the Greek language and the design and optimization of telecom networks. He coordinated several R&D projects financed by the EU, the Greek Telecom Industry, the Greek General Secretariat for Research and Technology, etc. and was Chairman of the international conferences EUROSPEECH 97, COMLEX 2000 and SPECOM 2005. He has published several books on Telecommunications and Electrotechnology and over 400 technical papers on Telecommunications and on Speech Technology.

 Dr Kokkinakis was a senior member of IEEE and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE), the VDE (Verein Deutscher Elektrotechniker) and ISCA (International Speech Communication Association). During the period 1997-2004 he was a member of the board of ISCA.