Simona Georgieva

Associate Professor, Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Simona is an evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on revealing and explaining the origins and evolutionary radiation of parasitic worms – an extremely diverse, abundant and widespread group of organisms. Using various host-parasite systems, her research seeks to elucidate the ecological and evolutionary consequences associated with parasites' life cycles and to address broader ecological and evolutionary questions. She blends traditional and novel approaches to study the relationships between parasite transmission dynamics, host specificity, and environmental factors that drive adaptive divergence and evolutionary innovation.

Simona holds a Ph.D. in Parasitology from the University of South Bohemia (Czechia) and conducted postdoctoral research at the Institute of Parasitology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Spain. Prior to her current position as an Associate Professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, she was an Outstanding Overseas Researcher of the National Research Foundation of Korea.

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Pavlos Pavlidis

Associate Professor for Bioinformatics, Department of Biology, University of Crete
Institute of Computer Science in Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH-ICS)

Pavlos Pavlidis is an Associate Professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Biology at the University of Crete and an affiliated faculty member at the Institute of Computer Science of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), where he leads the Evolutionary Biology and Bioinformatics (EvoLAB) research group. His scientific work focuses on the interface of computational and theoretical population genetics with evolutionary biology. The central axis of his research is understanding the forces and mechanisms that shape the evolution of natural populations using a combination of mathematical modeling, algorithmic approaches, and the analysis of large-scale genomic data (DNA sequences, expression profiles, Hi-C data). His academic journey began with a degree in Agricultural Biotechnology from the Agricultural University of Athens and a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology from the University of Crete. He completed his doctoral studies in Evolutionary Biology in 2011 at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich with the distinction summa cum laude, under the supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Stephan. This was followed by postdoctoral research in Heidelberg (HITS), where he specialized in High-Performance Computing (HPC) for population biology, as well as at IMBB-FORTH as a Marie-Curie Fellow, focusing on the evolution of gene regulatory networks. From 2016 until his election at the University of Crete, he served as a Researcher at the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH.

Dr. Pavlidis has developed innovative computational tools for detecting natural selection (e.g., SweeD, RAiSD, OmegaPlus), which serve as reference points in international literature. His published work includes articles in top-tier scientific journals. He maintains active international collaborations with research centers in Germany, the USA, and Turkey. Furthermore, he is deeply involved in training the next generation of scientists through the Bioinformatics graduate program of the School of Medicine and undergraduate courses in the Departments of Biology and Computer Science at the University of Crete.