Ioannis Emiris is a Professor of Informatics and Telecommunications at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and President and General Director of ATHENA Research Center. He has been a Researcher at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis from 1995 to 2002, and has been an external collaborator since then. He obtained his BScEng from Princeton University in 1989, and his PhD from U.C. Berkeley in 1994, both in Computer Science. His interests span Scientific Computing, Computational Geometry, Robotics, Bioinformatics, and Machine Learning. He has founded and leads the Lab of Geometric and Algebraic Algorithms, which has enjoyed funding through several European, bilateral, national, and industrial projects. He has supervised 13 PhD theses and 8 postdoctoral fellows. He is author of one scientific textbook, co-editor of two volumes, co-owner of an industrial patent, and author of more than 130 journal articles and peer-reviewed conference publications, of which two earned the Distinguished Paper Award at ACM International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (ISSAC); his H-index is 39.

Dr. Ioannis Chamodrakas is a member of the Laboratory Teaching Staff of the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He studied Physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and received his degree in 1999. He continued his studies at the postgraduate level at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of Athens, from which he received a Master's Degree in Advanced Information Systems in 2003 and a PhD in Informatics in 2009. He has participated in a large number of European and national research programs at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Athens University of Economics and Business since 1998. His research work focuses on Algorithm Engineering with Applications in Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Recommender Systems and Bioinformatics. He has authored 7 papers in leading and internationally recognized scientific journals and 10 publications in proceedings of international and national peer reviewed scientific conferences. His published work has received over 1100 citations with a Hirsch index equal to 7. He has served in the program committee of many international scientific conferences and has contributed as a reviewer to numerous international scientific journals and conferences (IEEE, Elsevier, Springer, etc.).

Professor Elias Eliopoulos is the Director of the Genetics Laboratory at the Biotechnology Department of the Agricultural University of Athens (A.U.A.) and leads the bioinformatics and structural biology group. He is professor of Biochemistry, a biophysicist and crystallographer by training with considerable experience in biomolecular structure analysis, epitope mapping of protein receptors, genetic polymorphisms and variation, cloning, with experimental and computational methods, protein structure prediction, ligand and drug design, protein design, in silico antibody design and biosoftware development. The group has experience and international reputation on computational protein folding, ab initio and homology modeling of proteins derived from edge gene research and membrane protein modeling. The group is also involved in many ligand computational design projects for pharmaceutical, medicinal and agricultural applications. 

EDUCATION

2019: PhD in Structural Biology and Protein Biomaterials (UoC, IMBB-FORTH - Greece)

2012: M.Sc. in Protein Biotechnology (UoC-Greece)

2009: Diploma Degree in Biology (UoC-Greece)

WORKING EXPERIENCE

Oct 2019 – Now: Post-Doctoral Researcher at I.M.B.B.-F.O.R.TH, Greece
                                (Laboratory of Structural Biology)

Sep 2020 – Now: Autonomous teaching and exam organizing of the under-graduate courses
                                "Enzymatic Biotechnology" and “Protein Engineering” at the Dept. of
                                 Biology of the Uni. of Crete

2014 – 2020:  Experienced scientist position at I.M.B.B.-F.O.R.TH, Greece (InnovCrete project /FP7-Regpot  program) and at University of Crete

Oct. 2010 –Jan. 2011: Laboratory Teaching Assistant of Microbiology Teaching Lab

                                        at the Dept. of Biology, Uni. of Crete

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

*Kefala K., Kotsifaki D., Providaki M., Kapetaniou E., Rahme L. and Kokkinidis M. Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of the C-terminal fragment of the MvfR protein of  Pseudomonas aeruginosa. (2012). Acta. Cryst F, 68, 695-697

*Kefala A., Kotsifaki D., Providaki M., Amprazi M. and Kokkinidis M. Expression, purification and crystallization of a protein resulting from the inversion of the aminoacid sequence of a helical bundle. (2017). ). Acta. Cryst F, 73, 51-53

 Dimovasili C., Fadouloglou V.E.,  Kefala A.,  Providaki M., Kotsifaki D,  Sarrou I.,  Plaitakis A.,  Zaganas I. and Kokkinidis M. Crystal structure of glutamate dehydrogenase 2, a positively selected novel human enzyme involved in brain biology and cancer pathophysiology. Journal of Neurochemistry (accepted) 

RESEARCH PROFILE

Being in a Structural Biology group since 2011, Dr. Kefala A. has studied deeply the protein folding problem, elucidating the relation between amino acid sequence and structural properties of α-helical bundles. The knowledge obtained was used for protein design leading to bio-derived materials for bio-medical applications and basic research through structural studies of protein folding through reverse sequences.

Notable achievements include: 

The elucidation of the protein folding of mutants of the α-helical protein Rop that is used as a canonical paradigm of this structural motif.

Protein design of novel protein-based biomaterials with specific engineered properties.

EDUCATION

2008: PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Hamburg Outstation, Germany (joint PhD with Heidelberg University, Germany).

2004: Diploma degree from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace.

WORKING EXPERIENCE

2014-present: Experienced Scientist (Post-doctoral researcher) at IMBB-FORTH (partially funded from the REGPOT-InnovCrete program).

2013: Military Service.

2009-2012: Post-doctoral researcher at the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute jointly with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kitakyushu University, Japan (JST-CREST grant).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Mylonas E., Yagi N., Fujii S., Ikesue K., Ueda T., Moriyama H., Sanada Y., Uezu K., Sakurai K., Okobira T. (2019) Structural analysis of a calix[4]arene-based Platonic Micelle. Sci Rep, 9, 1982.

Charova S.N., Gazi A.D., Mylonas E., Pozidis C., Sabarit B., Anagnostou D., Psatha K., Aivaliotis M., Beuzon C.R., Panopoulos N.J., Kokkinidis M. (2018) Migration of Type III Secretion System Transcriptional Regulators Links Gene Expression to Secretion. mBio, 9(4), e01096-18.

Bernadó, P., Mylonas, E., Petoukhov, M.V., Blackledge, M. and Svergun, D.I. (2007). Structural Characterization of Flexible Proteins Using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering. JACS, 129, 5656-5664.

Tidow, H., Melero, R., Mylonas, E., Freund, S.M.V., Grossmann, J.G., Carazo, J.M., Svergun, D.I., Valle, M. and Fersht, A.R. (2007). Quaternary structures of tumor suppressor p53 and a specific p53 DNA complex. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 104, 12324-12329.

Mylonas, E., Hascher, A., Bernadó, P., Blackledge, M., Mandelkow, E. and Svergun, D.I. (2008). Domain Conformation of Tau Protein Studied by Solution Small-Angle X-ray Scattering. Biochemistry, 47, 10345-10353.

SCΗOLARSHIPS, AWARDS and GRANTS

2004-2008: EMBL Fellowship,  European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Hamburg, Germany

2003: Academic Excellence Scholarship, Democritus University of Thrace- State Scholarships Foundation (IKY)

RESEARCH PROFILE

Efstratios Mylonas has worked on various systems such as proteins with intrinsic flexibility, non-coding RNAs, multimeric assemblies of proteins, protein-nucleic acids and even surfactants with potential use as non-viral gene delivery systems.

Notable achievements include: 

The development of the Ensemble Optimization Method (EOM) for the analysis of flexible proteins, one of the most cited methods in the SAXS field.

The elucidation of the domain conformation of the natively unfolded protein tau, important in Alzheimer’s disease pathology.

The elucidation of structure of the full length tumor suppressor p53 free and in complex with DNA.

Structural analysis of surfactant assemblies with potential as gene delivery systems with SAXS and molecular dynamics simulations which led to the discovery of platonic micelles.

Characterization of nucleic acids with unusual structures, such as the immunostimulatory polypod-DNA and the cell cycle regulator non-coding RNA 6S.

Design of a restriction enzyme with new specificity.

Discovery of a direct link between expression and secretion in phytopathogenic Type III Secretion System by use of the same protein components.