Dr. Konstantina Yannakopoulou

Institute of Physical Chemistry, NCSR "Demokritos", Aghia Paraskevi 15310- Athens Greece

tel: +30-210-6503796; fax: +30-210-651176: e-mail:dyanna"at"chem.demokritos.gr

Konstantina Yannakopoulou graduated from the Chemistry Department, University of Athens in 1981. She earned a research scholarship in NRC “Demokritos” where she stayed for two semesters (1982) and then she moved to South Carolina, US, where she earned a MSc degree in Chemistry with Prof. R. A. Abramovitch at Clemson University, USA (1985) (Thesis title: "Remote Intramolecular Functionalization of Arylnitrenium Ions. Seven-membered Ring Formation”. She then obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry with Prof. A. R. Katritzky at the University of Florida, USA (1988) (Dissertation title: “N-(α-Aminoalkyl)benzotriazoles: Equilibria and Reactions”). After an eight-month post-doctoral stay at the same laboratory she joined the Institute of Physical Chemistry, NCSR “Demokritos” in 1989, she was elected as staff-member in 1996 and promoted to Researcher A in 2006. Her research interests focus on molecular structure-properties relations and particularly on the characterization of host/guest interactions, stability and equilibria of cyclodextrin-guest systems, synthetic modifications of cyclodextrins to functional host molecules and their bio and nano applications (nucleotide and DNA carriers, cell penetrating agents and also as blockers of specific pore-forming lethal toxins). The research focus has also been recently expanded to photoactive molecules (such as porphyrins) and their covalent conjugates with cyclodextrins as multifunctional bioactive hosts systems combining singlet oxygen production, drug transport and fluorescence imaging for chemotoxic and photodynamic applications. She has authored and co-authored 72 papers in international refereed journals (including Angew. Chem., Chem. Eur. J., Chem. Asian J., J. Org. Chem., Org. Biomol. Chem., Carbohydr. Res., Eur. J. Org. Chem.), as well as a book chapter, and has presented her research in more than 60 conferences. Her work has received >980 hetero-citations (Web of Science). Since 1991 she has been the Scientist in Charge of the high resolution NMR Lab for liquid samples for the Institute, and she has co-organized and co-maintained the NMR infrastructure, the service and the contacts with private companies and academic institutions. She is currently the coordinator of the 4-year European project PEOPLE, ITN “Novel multifunctional cyclodextrin-based nanocarriers for drug  encapsulation and delivery as a strategy to overcome current therapeutic drawbacks” ,CYCLON,

comprising nine groups throughout Europe. Recently she served a Local Organising Committee member for the International NMR Conference EUROMAR 2013 (Crete, Greece, June 30 to July 5, 2013).