Irene Margiolaki is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Patras (UPAT, Patras, Greece). She graduated in Physics in 1999 (University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece). Her D.Phil. thesis on “Structural, Magnetic and Dynamic properties of fullerene- based materials” was completed in 2004 at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences, of the University of Sussex, UK (official date of graduation: 20 February 2004). During the period, 2003-2010, she has been employed, initially as a post doctorate fellow and later as an instrument scientist, by the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), in Grenoble, France.

An important part of her research at ESRF (2003-2010) and future research activities is the development of innovative powder diffraction methods for the structural characterisation of biological macromolecules, when data-quality single crystals for X-ray crystallography cannot be obtained. In order to efficiently explore this area, apart from her colleagues at ESRF (Prof. Andrew N. Fitch & Dr. Jonathan P. Wright) and APS (Prof. R. B. Von Dreele), she is working in collaboration with various international research teams including large scale facilities (synchrotron and nuclear sources), research institutes (Prof. B. Canard, B. Coutard & N. Papageorgiou, AFMB, Marseille, France), pharmaceutical companies (Novo Nordisk, Denmark) and other industrial units (PANalytical, Bruker, NanoMEGAS etc.). Since 2010, she leads her 15 membered research team. In 2013 she inaugurated an X-ray crystallography laboratory at the department of biology equipped with 2 modern diffractometers for single crystal and powder diffraction measurements. In 2015, she created a station for protein expression, purification and crystallization at the same department.