Maria Symeonaki is a Professor of Social Statistics at the Department of Social Policy, at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and the Director of the Social Statistics and Data Analysis Laboratory. She has studied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds a Ph.D. in the field of Statistics and Operations Research. Her research focus combines state-of-the-art statistical and computational techniques for the analysis of raw data drawn from international, large-scale sample surveys or from self-collected data via the conduct of empirical social research, to derive impactful results that inform social policies. She has been actively involved in many scientific and developmental research projects (national and European), and her published work mainly concerns measurement issues in the field of social research, focusing on intergenerational transitional probabilities and social mobility.