Themis Alissafi

Dr. Themis Alissafi is Assistant Professor at National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, and Affiliated Researcher at Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens (RFAA).

She pursued her BSc and MSc at the University of Crete (UOC). Her PhD at BRFAA focused on immunology. As an ERS and EAACI fellow she performed postdoctoral research in immunology at Gent University, IMBB and BRFAA. Since 2019 she is the Group Leader of the Immune Regulation laboratory at BRFAA and holds the position of the assistant professor in Biology at Medical School, NKUA.
Dr. Alissafi serves as the first Ambassador for European Research Council (ERC) for Greece. She is the national representative of the European Network ENOTTA. She is the coordinator of the accelerated seminar on Biomedical Research Methodology and is a member of the steering committee of the Immunology MSc program at NKUA and lecturer of Immunology and Cancer Biology in five postgraduate programs. 

The focus of her scientific work is on immunological tolerance networks. Her research team seeks mechanistic information on distinct regulatory cells involved in immune responses during autoimmunity and cancer, with a special focus on immune metabolism, in an effort to develop novel, precise therapeutic interventions and to discover innovative biomarkers. 

Dr. Alissafi’s track-record includes publications, in major scientific journals (i.e. Cell Metabolism, Nature Medicine, JCI, Nature Communications, JEM, PNAS). During her scientific career, she had the honour to receive many prestigious international (ERS, EAACI, EWRR) and national (Kafatos, IKY, HELANI) awards. Her research has attracted > 2.5 million euros funding by the ERC STG 2020, and the HFRI.