our Team
Dimitris Thanos
DIRECTOR
Dr. Dimitris Thanos was an Associate Professor with Tenure at College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University before moving back to Greece as the first Director of Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, Greece. Currently he is the Director of the Center of Basic Research, Chairman of the Scientific Board and Vice President at the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Greece. He is an ordinary member of the Academy of Athens since 2016.
Periklis Makrythanasis, MD, PhD
SUPERVISING SCIENTIST
Dr Periklis Makrythanasis obtained his Medical Diploma from the Medical School of the University of Athens and his PhD on genetics from the Choremeio Genetics Laboratory of the same University. He then moved to Geneva where he obtained the specialty of Medical Genetics and worked as Junior Consultant in the Genetic Service of the University Hospitals of Geneva and Senior Analyst of diagnostic exome sequencing. He also worked for many years as senior post doc in the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development of the University of Geneva on many aspects of genetic research focusing on analysis of Next Generation Sequencing results.
Katerina Zoi, PhD
DEPUTY SUPERVISING SCIENTIST
Dr. Zoi studied Biology at the University of Athens and obtained her PhD in molecular genetics in Leukemia from the School of Medicine of the same University. She moved to BRFAA Haematology Research Laboratory in 2003. She has been working on the development of molecular assays used in diagnosis and in monitoring haematologic patients’ response to treatment, which lead in the establishment of Molecular Diagnostics Service on Haematologic Malignancies at BRFAA. Her research is related to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of myeloid neoplasias. The focus recently has been shifted on whole exome, whole genome and RNA sequencing to identify novel mutations implicated not only in disease pathogenesis but contribute in disease evolution as well. She has participated in many collaborating activities and her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals.
Emmanouil Athanasiadis, PhD
DEPUTY SUPERVISING SCIENTIST
Emmanouil (Manos) received his PhD in Medical Physics in 2010 from the University of Patras, funded by the National State Scholarship Foundation of Greece. He worked as Research Associate in Medical Imaging (Marie Curie) at University Colleague London (UCL 2010). He then worked as Research Associate in Bioinformatics at Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA) (2011-2015), and the Department of Haematology at University of Cambridge, also affiliated with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Wellcome – MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, while supervising MSc and PhD students from University of Cambridge (2016-2018). From July 2018 until July 2020, He worked as Computational Biologist in Functional Genomics at GSK, while working as Visiting Scientist in OpenTargets and mentoring Research Associates from University of Cambridge. In 2019 he also elected GSK Associate Fellow (top ~5% of people working at GSK’s R&D globally). Since July 2020, He has been elected Group Leader (Staff Research Scientist – Associate Professor level) at BRFAA in the field of “Analysis of Genomic Data”, also affiliated with OpenTargets, working as Visiting Scientist. His research focused on single/bulk cell/nuclei genomics/transcriptomics/proteomics/multi-omics, spatial transcriptomics, Medical Imaging, AI/ML/deep learning applied to big data analysis.
Ioannis Vatsellas, PhD
WET LAB SCIENTIFIC MANAGER
Dr Giannis Vatsellas studied biology at the University of Crete, where he worked on the genetics of the malaria mosquito. He carried out his PhD research in BRFAA, studying mechanisms by which human genes respond to environmental stimuli and during development and cellular differentiation. His Post-doctoral research focused on the genetic analysis of cardiomyopathies with Next Generation Sequencing gene panels. Since 2017 he is the wet-lab scientific manager of the Greek Genome Center.
Giorgos Panagopoulos, MSc
LABORATORY SCIENTIST
Mr Giorgos Panagopoulos graduated by the Department of Biology of University of Athens. He received his MSc in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from University of Crete. He is a PhD candidate in Biomedical Research Foundation and his research focus is the human antiviral response. In GGC he specializes is in Quality Control, Library Preparation and Sequencing of DNA and RNA samples.
Theodoros Loupis, MSc
LABORATORY SCIENTIST, BIOINFORMATICIAN
Mr Theodoros Loupis studied Biology at the the Department of Biology of University of Athens. He then received his MSc in “Bioinformatics and Computational Biology” at the same University where, in collaboration with BRFAA, worked on the identification of novel molecular lesions implicated in the onset and progression of myeloid neoplasms. In GGC, he is a Laboratory Scientist for the Library Preparation and Sequencing of DNA and RNA samples. He also develops computational pipelines for the bioinformatic analysis of such NGS derived data.
Artemis Korovesi, MSc
LABORATORY SCIENTIST
Ms Artemis Korovesi studied Biology at the University of Athens. She holds a Master’s degree in Applications of Biology in Medicine of UoA. She has carried out research projects on the fields of genetics/phylogenetics, genomics and proteomics. Since 2019 she works on the development of genetic diagnosis for Cardiovascular and Neuromuscular diseases using Targeted NGS in BRFAA. In GGC she specializes in Quality Control, Library Preparation and Sequencing of DNA and RNA samples.