External Scientific Staff
External Scientific Staff
dtouban@pasteur.gr
Dr. Dimitra K. Toubanaki is a Post-doctoral research associate at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute (HPI). Her research interests are continuously evolving to span the areas of point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases, biomarkers identification, nanomaterial-based analytical tools, bioassays, biosensors and drugs/vaccines development. She received her B.Sc. in Chemistry (2003) and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry (2008) from University of Patras, Greece. She has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Department of Chemistry, Tufts University, Boston, USA (2008-2009), focusing on single cell analysis assays, and at HPI Athens, Greece (2009-2016, 2019-current). She has also served as R&D Director in private sector, Greece (2017-2018), evaluating and developing molecular diagnostics methods. Her academic training and research experience has provided an excellent background in multiple disciplines including chemical sciences, molecular biology, microbiology, genetics, materials science, bioinformatics and immunology. As a distinction, she has received a Fellowship of Excellence for post-doctoral research in Greece (2012-2015). She is the corresponding author or co-author of 20 (peer reviewed) publications (more than 350 citations, h index: 11). She has communicated her work with more than 50 oral and poster presentations in international and national conferences and serves as a reviewer in 40 high-impact peer-reviewed journals. She has participated in 10 funded research projects and has gain personal funding >150.000 €. Dr Toubanaki is actively involved in science education activities for the past 15 years. She has been a mentor in the ARRAYS project, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Boston, MA, USA. The primary objective of the ARRAYS project was to inspire interest in science by creating opportunities for young scientists to participate in real world research. She is performing science experiments in Primary schools and has participated in Researcher’s Night, as well as in Science Festivals.
Her main research interests are currently evolving around two axes: (i) utilization of high- throughput technologies for viral disease immunopathology elucidation and biomarkers identification, and (ii) novel molecular tools (e.g. PCR-arrays, biosensors) and methodologies development for point-of-care/ on site pathogen detection. Currently, she is focusing on aquaculture threatening pathogens due to their great economic and environmental implications.
Complete list of publications: