Despina Sanoudou is a Professor of Pharmacogenomics at the 4^th Department of Internal Medicine, “Attikon Hospital” - Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She studied Molecular Biology, obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK, and worked as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Children’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, Boston. She is certified in Clinical Molecular Diagnostics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Dr Sanoudou previously served as an Instructor at the Harvard Medical School, as a Principal Investigator at the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, and an Assistant Professor at the Medical School of the University of Athens. She has also been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Imperial College of London, a Visiting Scholar at the Boston University Medical School, and an Advisor to the Sir Magdi Yacoub Research Foundation. Her research team (has employed >30 young scientists to date) focuses on the discovery of novel diagnostic and prognostic markers, the identification of novel therapeutic targets, and the evaluation of chemical compounds against cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

Professor Sanoudou’s expertise lies in the areas of Human Genetics, Genomics, Pharmacogenomics, Drug Discovery, Biological Drugs, and Personalized Medicine. The results of this work have been published in over 95 scientific articles and book chapters (H-Index_Google = 38 and 4,565 citations), 200 oral and 210 written presentations in scientific meetings worldwide. This work has been funded by competitive research grants from the European Union, the Leducq Foundation, the Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, the Hellenic Cardiological Society, Fondation Sante, the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and more.

Dr Sanoudou serves as an evaluator of research grant applications at the European Commission (FP6, FP7 and Horizon2020 calls), and other international funding organizations. She is also an Associate Editor of the journal Metabolism, Guest Editor at the Journal of Precision Medicine and Current Pharmaceutical Design, an Editorial Board member of 7 publishers, and a reviewer in 38 scientific journals. She has organized multiple international conferences and teaches Precision Medicine to Medical students, as well as at 9 MSc programs in Biosciences.

Dr Sanoudou has received a series of awards including the L’Oreal-UNESCO award for Young Women in Science, an American Society of Human Genetics education award, a Panhellenic Association of Bioscientists award, multiple Hellenic Cardiological Society and Greek Society of Pharmacology scientific awards and others.