Vassiliki Lila Koumandou earned her BSc in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. She is now an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, where she teaches Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Evolution. Her research interests include the evolution of membrane trafficking in eukaryotes, bacterial extracellular vesicles, bioremediation, and the evolution of bioenergetic pathways in prokaryotes.