Vania comes from Athens, Greece, where she also did her undergrad studies in the Biology Department (Actually, Tota and Vania have a rather funny story about their Bachelor’s time, make sure you ask them when you visit the lab!). During her undergrad thesis, in the lab of Dr. Poulopoulou in Athens Medical School, she investigated the role of neuroligins in the glutamatergic signaling of T-lymphocytes of healthy and autistic children. In 2012, she moved to Dresden, Germany, to join the group of Dr. Stephan Speier as a research assistant, focusing on β-cell physiology. In 2013, she joined the Master’s Program in Regenerative Biology and Medicine at the Technical University and the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD). For her Master’s thesis she joined the Vastenhouw lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics where she was introduced to zebrafish and worked on the role of histone level in setting the timing for zygotic genome activation. Moving on to her PhD, in 2015 she joined the Reimer and then the Brand lab in CRTD where she focused on remyelination and oligodendrocyte progenitor cell biology during regeneration of the adult zebrafish spinal cord. In 2019, she returned to Greece and joined the Beis lab in BRFAA as a post-doc. She is now working on cellular and molecular mechanisms orchestrating cardiac valve regeneration. She loves coffee, Illustrator, color-coding and science communication. She also has a favorite zebrafish developmental stage. It is the 128-cell stage.