Dr. Vasiliki Gkretsi

Dr. Vasiliki Gkretsi received her Diploma in Biology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Pittsburgh, USA. Following completion of her Ph.D., she worked as a post-doctoral fellow under the Marie Curie ITN program at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center Al. Fleming in Athens, Greece and as Research Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Sheila Sherlock fellowship award 2012. During 2010–2014, she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Thessaly Medical School, Greece. From 2015–2017 she worked as a senior scientist at the Cancer Biophysics Lab of the University of Cyprus. Since 2017, she has been full-time faculty at European University Cyprus, where she is currently Associate Professor, the program coordinator of the Biomedical Sciences program at the School of Sciences, and the group leader in the Cancer Metastasis and Adhesion Group of the Basic and Translational Cancer Research Center (BTCRC). Her current research focuses on the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM), integrin-proximal protein complexes, cell adhesion, and the actin cytoskeleton in basic cellular processes related to cancer progression and metastasis using 2D in vitro approaches and 3D tumor models.