Maria G Roubelakis, DPhil, is Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology at the National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine and she is affiliated member of the
Cell and Gene Therapy Laboratory of the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of
Athens (BRFAA). She was admitted as a PhD student at the University of Oxford in 1999
granted by honored MRC and LRF scholarships. During her PhD studies, she examined the role
of PZR receptors in migration of bone marrow mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) and
hematopoietic stem cells. She continued her postdoc training in the same laboratory and then
moved to BRFAA, Athens Greece. At BRFAA she carried out a research effort into the study of
MSCs derived from fetal sources. Her studies led to a systematic characterization of the
molecular and cellular aspects of fetal MSCs. Her studies were extended to the analysis of fetal
MSCs at post-­transcriptional level and also to their use in therapeutic applications of acute
hepatic failure and bladder cancer. The research has been recognized by distinguished awards
and funded by UK, national and international (EU) competitive research grants. Maria G.
Roubelakis has been actively involved in undergraduate and post graduate training (she is
currently member of 6 postgraduate MSc courses) and her laboratory has trained a significant
number of young scientists. She honored with Fulbright Scholarship for “Induced Pluripotent
Stem Cells Derived from AF-­MSCs: Insights to the Molecular Pathways Involved during
Reprogramming” at University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA