Consortium

Daphne Bazopoulou

Daphne Bazopoulou, received her Bachelor’s, M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Crete and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Departments of Mechanical Engineering & Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology of University of Michigan (USA).

In 2021, she returned to Greece and established her independent research group in her home country. She is currently an Assistant Professor of the University of Crete, Department of Biology and a collaborating faculty member of IMBB at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH). Daphne has worked extensively on the role of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and redox signalling in the C. elegans aging process. She leads the Biology of Stress and Aging Lab which uses inter-disciplinary approaches i.e., from molecular biology, physiology, and engineering to study the impact of environmental stressors on organismal health and survival. Daphne has published in leading journals, including Nature, Nature Microbiology, and Nature Aging and has received competitive funding from national and international agencies for her research and entrepreneurship activities (NIH, Foundation Sante, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, University of Michigan-Center of Entrepreneurship).

Ellen Nollen

Ellen Nollen is a professor of Molecular Biology of Aging at the European Research institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA) of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). Her research focuses on cellular and organismal mechanisms of protection against protein damage in aging and age-related diseases.

Nollen pioneered the use of genome-wide genetic screens in C. elegans models to uncover evolutionary conserved biological mechanisms of protection and identify targets for interventions. Ellen serves in scientific advisory boards of organizations related to aging and age-related diseases, including the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Aging, in Cologne and Parkinson NL. She also served as an interim director of ERIBA at the UMCG Groningen and is a board member of the Dutch Society for Research on Ageing (DuSRA). Nollen won several personal fellowships, including NWO talent and EMBO long term fellowships for research at Northwestern University, USA, and a Veni fellowship to continue her independent research line at the Hubrecht Institute. She received a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship to start her group at the UMCG and won a EMBO Young Investigator Award, an Alfred Tissières Young Investigator Award and an ERC StG as recognition of her pioneering work on modifiers of protein aggregation and toxicity.

Maria Ermolaeva

Maria Ermolaeva is an accomplished biochemist and longevity researcher. After earning her degree in biochemistry from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2002, she pursued doctoral studies at EMBL in Rome and the University of Cologne, where she explored inflammatory regulation in mouse models.

From 2009 to 2015, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the CECAD Excellence Cluster at the University of Cologne, investigating the links between DNA damage, stress resilience, and healthy aging. Since 2015, Dr. Maria Ermolaeva has led the “Stress Tolerance and Homeostasis” research group at the Leibniz Institute on Aging in Jena, Germany. Her lab focuses on developing interventions that enhance functional resilience in aging, ultimately promoting healthy longevity. Their research explores metabolic and microbial interventions, along with various inducers of adaptive stress responses. The Ermolaeva lab employs a diverse range of model systems, from nematodes and human in vitro models of replicative aging to killifish and mice. Maria has published extensively in leading journals, including Nature, Cell, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Immunology, and Nature Metabolism. Her contributions have been recognized with awards such as the 2022 Dieter Platt-Stiftung Research Award in Biogerontology and prestigious funding, including an ERC Consolidator Grant to advance personalized longevity treatments. In addition to her basic research on aging, Maria has nearly a decade of experience in technology transfer, overseeing translational projects through the SPARK@FLI program since 2016.

Consortium

Project

More

Contact Info