I hold a diploma in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the Democritus University of Thrace (Greece) and a master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece). During my studies, I became so passionate about computational drug design that I spent six months as a visiting student at the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (Greece), an experience that solidified my interest and helped me develop my skills in the field. Lastly, for my master’s thesis project, I focused on structure-based drug design, specifically on aptamers. I utilized artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to predict the structure of aptamers from their sequence.
Through my so far work on aptamers, I am fascinated by their potential in therapeutics. I strongly believe that dedicating further time and effort to their study will yield significant outcomes, and thus I decided to continue my research as a PhD candidate in the RETORNA project.
My role is to screen libraries of aptamer sequences using techniques such as molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, and binding free energy calculations to identify the top-scoring candidates and eventually provide them to the collaborating groups for experimental validation.