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Associate Professor in Viral Immunology, University of Birmingham

Dr Zania Stamataki is a liver immunologist with an interest in immune regulation.

Dr Stamataki obtained her PhD in Immunology from Imperial College London (Professor Mary Ritter) together with the Institute for Animal Health, Compton (Dr Bryan Charleston). Her PhD studies characterised human, bovine and ovine follicular dendritic cells, a stromal cell type with a role in B cell effector functions, viral retention and prion disease.

Dr Stamataki went on to study the role of signalling molecules in B cell development with Dr Martin Turner at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. She came to the University of Birmingham in 2005 to study virus transmission and humoral immunity to infection in Professor Jane McKeating's Hepatitis C Research Group. Zania then moved to the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit for Liver Disease at the Centre for Liver and Gastrointestinal Research with Professor David Adams, to work on lymphocyte-hepatocyte interactions and liver immunology.

Zania commenced her career as a principal investigator with a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship, which is designed for those in need of flexible support. During this time, she looked more carefully at lymphocyte-hepatocyte interactions using imaging technologies, while she had two little boys and a mum deteriorating with motor neuron disease. The fellowship allowed her the freedom to explore ideas and build models that lead to the discovery of a new biological process that they termed “enclysis”, the enclosure and lysis of live regulatory T cells by hepatocytes.

Dr Stamataki is passionate about biomedical research for patient benefit and enjoys working closely with chemists, physicists, mathematicians, clinicians, medical and biomedical students, in addition to industrial partners interested in drug discovery. Her team is driven by innovation and they value creativity, honesty, collaboration and robustness in scientific discovery.

Experience

  • 2021–present
    Associate Professor, University of Birmingham
  • 2017–2021
    Senior Lecturer , University of Birmingham
  • 2011–2016
    Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, Royal Society

Education

  •  
    Imperial College London, PhD

Professional Memberships

  • British Society for Immunology
  • European Association for the Study of the Liver