You chose to build your career outside of Greece, would you like to tell us some of the reasons that led you to this decision? I work on many research projects, but also as a mentor helping students. My daily life in Crete consists of morning, afternoon, evening, and sometimes midnight work, as due to the time difference most meetings and lectures in Arizona are nighttime in Greece. I am currently in Crete working remotely with Arizona State University. How is your day now as a postdoctoral researcher in Arizona? There were also the weekends, where sometimes the sun allowed us to walk in the wonderful parks and observe the beautiful vegetation and animals of the lakes and rivers. I would then return quickly -in the rain- to my room and practice for as many hours as possible on the electric piano. Then, I would visit the music department of the university to check whether there was a piano available for practice. I learned to go to the lab, to the office, take care of the algae and predators in the lab, attend seminars, rush to libraries with my bike, try to take care of myself on a daily basis, and present my research. There I found a team with which we had similar goals to study cancer, multicellularity, evolution, ecology, and other interesting topics, from a holistic perspective.ĭuring your PhD, how was your daily life at one of the best universities in Europe?Įveryday life in Oxford was very interesting, exciting, and with many responsibilities and learning opportunities. This collaboration led to another and then I found myself being interviewed for a postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University. One of my thoughts after my PhD was to work with a research team in Cambridge studying transmissible cancers in dogs and Tasmanian devils. And I found Stuart West’s team at the University of Oxford.Īnd there you stayed for a master’s and doctorate, what followed? So, I tried to find where they study the evolution of multicellularity from cancer’s point of view. This was the trigger to look further into what I would research in my master’s degree and where. A lecture by Lefteris Zouros, speaking about the perspective of cancer cells as selfish cells within a community of cooperative cells (the multicellular body), did the trick. I thought cancer had been studied mainly molecularly until then, and it would be wonderful if we could look at the phenomenon from an evolutionary and ecological point of view. Towards the end of my studies, some courses in social evolution and major evolutionary transitions in individuality, such as the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms, caught my attention, as they combined knowledge of evolution, ecology, and molecular biology.Īnd how did you combine Evolutionary Biology with the study of cancer? I chose the molecular courses, mainly because I wanted to start with the microcosm and later study the macrocosm. We had to choose whether we wanted to specialize in either molecular biology and biotechnology or environmental biology. Why did you decide to focus on Evolutionary Biology?ĭuring my BSc, I was excited about many biology courses, especially ecology and evolution. One hypothesis is that these may be related to cancer. Not germs or mutated cells of our own, but for example cells that were passed on to us from our mother, during embryonic development. Some of these factors may be, for instance, the environment in which an animal lived during its evolutionary history, chimerism, and others.Ĭhimerism is used to describe the genetically different cells within us. Based on these data, we explore various factors that may explain the diversity of cancer in hundreds of animals on the tree of life. We have, as a research team, data on the incidence of cancer that affects almost every species. I mainly focus on the evolution and ecology point of view. Of course! I am currently working on various areas of cancer research as a postdoctoral fellow. Would you like to talk a bit about the main areas of your research? Stefania spoke to Greek Women in STEM and we discussed a little bit of everything. Together with her twin sister, Marianna Kapsetaki, they have remarkable distinctions in their CV as piano soloists. Along with her career in science, she also excels in the field of music. Afterwards, she continued her studies at the University of Oxford where she obtained both a Master’s and Doctorate in the field of Evolutionary Biology. She studied Biology at the University of Crete. Stefania Kapsetaki, one of the «Kapsetaki twins», is a Biologist specializing in zoology. Where do evolutionary biology, cancer research and music meet? In the unique Stefania Kapsetaki!
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