Speaker Info

 Loukia G. Karacosta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cancer Systems Imaging at MD Anderson. She received her B.S. degree in Biology at the School of Biology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology & Toxicology at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, NY. Before joining MD Anderson she was a postdoctoral researcher at For-Robin, a start-up company that develops humanized antibodies with theranostic applications in cancer therapy, and a Cancer Systems Biology postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Her research interests include cancer systems biology approaches, single-cell analysis, phenotypic plasticity and therapy resistance in cancer.

Maria A. Tsiarli is an Associate Researcher at Brown University, USA and a Researcher at biobank.cy, Center of Excellence in Biobanking and Biomedical Research Molecular Medicine Research Center, Cyprus . She received her B.S. degree in Biology at the School of Biology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, her M.Sc. in Neuroscience by the University College London (UCL), London, UK and her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the School of Arts and Sciences, University at Pittsburgh, PA and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA. She has conducted postdoctoral research in transcriptional regulation dynamics at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA alongside Dr. Erica Larschan. Additionally, she was awarded a Fix Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Harvard Medical School to conduct novel research on the neuro-developmental mechanisms of aggression with Dr. Edward Kravitz. Her research interests include transcriptional and molecular mechanisms of brain development, stem cell dynamics and cancer neuroscience. Dr. Tsiarli is an elected Board Member of the Cyprus Biological Society since 2020.

Loizos G. Loizou is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Pediatric Oncology/ Hematology/Immunology at the Medical School of the University of Nicosia. He received his Medical Degree from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, his postgraduate Diploma in Preventive Pediatrics from the University of Strasburg, France and his Diploma of specialist in Pediatrics from the University of Nancy, France. In 1989, the Minister of Health of Cyprus, invited him to return to Cyprus and undertake the establishment and operation of the Pediatric Oncology-Hematology Department at the Archbishop Makarios III Hospital, of which he was the Director for 32 years, until 2021. He created the clinical and laboratory services for children and adolescents with cancer and leukemia. His medical team carried out the first bone marrow transplantation in Cyprus (1996) and created the first modern leukemia diagnostics laboratory and the first cryopreservation facility for storing pluripotent umbilical cord and bone marrow stem cells. Also, in 1990 he established the first cancer registry, the Pediatric Oncology Registry of Cyprus (PORCY). He is a pioneer in the care of children and adolescents with cancer in Cyprus and towards these goals, he created (1990) and is the President, of the ELPIDA Foundation for Children with Cancer and Leukemia.

Evangelia Loizou has obtained her degree in Biology from the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens while on a full-time scholarship from the Cyprus National Scholarship foundation IKY.  After finishing her degree, she moved to London where she did her Masters in Cancer at UCL, U.K.. Dr. Loizou holds a Ph.D in Molecular Biology and Cancer Genetics from the Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NY. Her research focused on mouse models of disease and genome engineering tools has been published in prestigious scientific journals and she has co-authored numerous scientific papers.  During her Ph.D she was the recipient of the Dorris J. Hutchison Student Fellowship (SKD), which is awarded as a scholarship to candidates with remarkable research proposals. Beyond her academic accolades, Dr. Loizou has experience in Finance and Equity Research as she worked in the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs covering healthcare and biotechnology companies. Eva is currently a Sr. Customer Success Associate at Intelligencia, a healthtech startup that uses AI to predict the success of clinical trials.

Iakovos Toumazis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services Research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Toumazis leads a research program that focuses on the optimization of cancer care through mathematical and simulation models. He received a B.S. in Mathematics with a focus on Probability Theory & Statistics from the University of Patras, Greece and his M.S. & Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a focus on operations research. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the Departments of Biomedical Data Sciences and Radiology. Since 2015, Dr. Toumazis is a member of the National Cancer Institute sponsored Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network’s (CISNET) Lung Working group. His research interests include sequential decision making under uncertainty, personalized cancer care, cancer prevention, cost-effectiveness analysis, and outcomes research.

Constantinos Deltas is the is founder and Director of biobank.cy, a Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, focusing on Biobanking and Biomedical Research, at the University of Cyprus. He studied Pharmacy at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and received a PhD in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, USA. In 1991, he was invited to return to Cyprus and be amongst scientists who established and developed the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics. In 2002 he was elected Professor of Genetics at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cyprus, where he was the first faculty and Chairman. In 2020 he moved as faculty to the University of Cyprus Medical School. He is directing a research lab with interest in inherited disorders, developing molecular genetics, cell biology and animal model projects. Amongst others, his group is focusing on inherited kidney disorders, inherited heart conditions and cancer, in collaboration with many institutes and Universities in Cyprus and abroad. He teaches human medical molecular genetics to medical and graduate students. His group is leading the Cyprus Human Genome Project a novel and unique project, aiming to establish the blueprint of the Cypriot genome.