by Angela Zographou, HR officer
The Medical School is very privileged to have added six outstanding members to its full-time faculty team:
Dr George Kaponides is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Nicosia Medical School. He has, since 2013, been the Clinical Lead for the placement of T Year medical students at Ygeia Polyclinic for the St George’s, University of London Medical Programme. He has also been the Clinical Lead in Limassol for the NeuroPlus block since 2016.
Dr Kaponides graduated from the Medical Department of the Karolinska Institute and specialised in Neurology at the Karolinska University Hospital, both in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a Consultant Neurologist and he also holds certification in General Practice. After working in Stockholm both in university hospitals and in private practice for six years, he moved to Cyprus in 2009. He is currently in private practice in Limassol and he is an associate doctor at Ygeia Polyclinic.
In 2010 he was elected president of the Cyprus Neurological Society, a position he held until 2014. He has a special interest in Cerebrovascular neurology, Traumatic brain injury, Neurorehabilitation, Multiple Sclerosis, Post-polio syndrome and Botulinum toxin treatment for neurological conditions.
He is a board member and national delegate for Cyprus at the UEMS/EBN (European Union of Medical Specialists/European Board of Neurology) and an appointed member of the European Academy of Neurology Scientific Panels on Stroke and Neurorehabilitation.
Dr Dimitrios Kanakis is a specialist Pathologist and Neuropathologist and holds the position of Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Nicosia Medical School.
His fields of research are predominantly Neurooncology, Neurodegenerative and Demyelinating Diseases and other areas of Neuroscience, but he has also published in various other areas of General Pathology. He has co-authored 23 original Research Articles (PubMed; 2016) and he is a Reviewer in several International Peer Reviewed Journals such as “Cancer Growth and Metastasis”, “Clinical Anatomy”, “Clinical Medicine Insights: Pathology”, “European Journal of Dermatology”, “Hippokratia”, “Human Pathology”, “Journal of Central Nervous System Disease”, “Journal of Experimental Neuroscience”, Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine” and “Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry”. Furthermore, he is Co-author of the Chapters “Concise Interpretation of useful Data in the Histological Diagnosis of Malignant CNS-Neoplasms” and “CNS-Neoplasms in Adults: Diagnostic Algorithms, Histochemical, Immunohistochemical and Molecular Markers”, in the Book “Guidelines for the Histological Diagnosis of Malignant Neoplasms”, published by the Hellenic Society of Pathology. In addition, he published together with Prof Elmar Kirches the Chapter “PTTG (Securin) as Cancer Biomarker” in the Book “Biomarkers in Cancer” (Springer Publishers; 2015). Dr Kanakis is the editor of the book “Pituitary Adenoma: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Treatment Options” (Nova Science Publishers; 2016).
Dr Stelios Georgiades is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Nicosia Medical School. He holds a BSc in Biological Sciences, University College London, a BA in Psychology, Middlesex University, an MSc in Clinical Psychology University of London and a PhD in Clinical Psychology, University of Surrey.
Dr Georgiades worked at hospitals and universities in the UK for a number of years. He held positions such as Research Assistant, Clinical Psychologist and Lecturer of Psychology. Since he returned to Cyprus in 2001 he has been working as a Clinical Psychologist/Neuropsychologist in a private practice in Nicosia. At the same time, he joined Intercollege, Nicosia as part-time Lecturer in Psychology. In 2013 he was appointed Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology as well as the Coordinator of the MSc Programme in Clinical Psychology. This appointment lasted until summer 2016 just before becoming a full-time faculty member of the University of Nicosia Medical School.
He is a member of many professional organisations in Cyprus and abroad. He has been heavily involved in research and has contributed in journal publications, conference abstracts, monographs and manual writing (EUTOPA).
Dr Despina Moissidou is a Lecturer/Lead in Histology, at the University of Nicosia Medical School.
Dr Moissidou is a biological anthropologist. She holds a BA in History from the American College in Greece, an MSc in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Cell Biology again from the University of Manchester.
She worked as a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, Department of Histology. She has specialised in the histological study of ancient mummified tissue and she is also a trained Crime Scene Investigator. She has participated in many research projects, including the development of histochemical techniques for the detection of senescent cells in cancerous tissues (in collaboration with Democritus Institute, Athens), and the anthropological examination of human remains for the Missing Persons Committee in Cyprus (UN bi-communal project).
She is currently running two research projects on ancient mummies, one in collaboration with the University of Madrid Medical School, Department of Forensic Medicine, and the second with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, the Anthropological Museum. The purpose is the histological examination of mummified tissue for possible pathologies, as well as the creation of a protocol database for similar anthropological studies.
Dr Chloe Antoniou is a Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of Nicosia Medical School. She obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago, which was funded by the Cyprus-America Scholarship Programme of the Fulbright Commission Cyprus. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from the lab of Prof Leslie W.M. Fung at the University of Illinois, Chicago. During her doctoral studies, she was awarded a Paaren fellowship as the top student specializing in Biochemistry.
Dr Antoniou worked as a post-doctoral scholar and research lab manager in the lab of Prof Tobin Sosnick, Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. From 2012-2014, she worked at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics as a Post-doctoral Fellow and at the Cyprus School of Molecular Medicine as a Research Faculty Associate. From 2013-2015 she held the position of Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Life and Health Sciences at the University of Nicosia.
Dr Antoniou’s research interests lie in the field of protein biochemistry and biophysics. Amongst others, her work includes the structural investigations of -spectrin upon binding -spectrin and the understanding of the structural changes of the phototropin LOV2 domain upon light excitation.
Dr Stella Loizou is a Lecturer and the Academic PBL Lead at the University of Nicosia Medical School. Dr Loizou holds a degree in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Medical School, NKUA, Greece). She worked as a Post-doctoral research fellow at the Medical School, NKUA, Greece and at the Chemistry Department, University of Cyprus. She also worked as a scientific collaborator at the State General Laboratory, Nicosia, Cyprus. Dr Loizou joined the Department of Life and Health Sciences of the University of Nicosia in 2013 as a Researcher and a part-time Lecturer of Biology/Biochemistry, an appointment that ended in summer 2016. At the same time she worked part-time for the University of Nicosia Medical School as a PBL tutor, Clinical Communication Skills tutor and OSCEs examiner. She received funding from the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, Ministry of Development, Greece (2005-2008) and from the Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus (2010, 2013). Her research work has been published in refereed academic journals and international conference proceedings.