Eleni Petsalaki

Dr Eleni Petsalaki completed her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine at the Department of Biology of the University of Crete in Greece in 2014, and has continued working as a post-doc in Dr George Zachos’ lab of Cell Cycle and Division since. In 2021, she received a Research grant for three years from the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) as an independent researcher, to investigate mechanisms that prevent chromatin bridges from breaking in cytokinesis.

Her main research interest is to understand fundamental mechanisms of mitotic cell division in human cells and how mis-regulation of these mechanisms can lead to tumour formation and progression, with the aim to identify potential targets for cancer therapy. Her work has described several novel molecules and biochemical pathways that participate in the mitotic spindle and abscission checkpoints, two cell surveillance mechanisms that protect against erroneous chromosome segregation or chromatin damage during cell division. She has published 14 papers in leading scientific journals (13 first author publications) such as the Journal of Cell Biology (5), Nature Communications (1), Journal of Cell Science (2) and others, and her work has received >300 citations so far. She is a member of the Biochemical Society (FEBS), the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and the Royal Society of Biology (RSB), and an Ambassador of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). In 2018, she was awarded the “Achilleas and Ekaterini Dionysopoulou Award” from the Academy of Athens for the best original research paper with subject from cancer research, and a Commendation for excellence in Biology “Fotis Kafatos” from The Pan-Hellenic Association of Bioscientists (PEV).