Haralabia Boleti (Biochemistry / Cell Biology)
Haralabia Boleti |
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Haralabia is currently working in biomedical research at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute in Greece. She started her career as a pure chemist, but was eventually won over by the chemistry of life and biology.
Haralabia has studied and worked in four countries, three in Europe (Greece, Germany and France) and one in North America (Canada). She has degrees in chemistry (BSc, University of Athens), biochemistry (MSc, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada) and cell biology (PhD, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany). She did her postdoctoral training at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France.
During her studies and work in Canada, Germany and France, Haralabia was not only exposed to three different cultures but to three different education and working communities and to three different languages. She found this an extremely enriching experience. She learned to adapt to new environments and working cultures and to accept cultural differences. She became a citizen of the world, fully aware of the internationality of science. Six years ago, she finally decided to put down roots and establish her career in Greece, because she found nowhere else in the world such fragrant orange blossom!!!
For the last ten years, she has studied how pathogens interact with their hosts. A host organism for a pathogen is the organism susceptible to the attack of this pathogen and within which the pathogen survives and multiplies. This often leads to serious infectious diseases. Haralabia has worked with bacteria, viruses and protozoan parasites, looking at how pathogens enter their hosts, how they escape the host's defense mechanisms and how they manage to highjack and use important physiological mechanisms of the host cells for their survival and multiplication. This is a very important field of biomedical research, because it helps scientists understand how infectious diseases are caused and provides them with the information and tools to develop new drugs and vaccines.
Her research involves molecular biology and biochemical techniques used to manipulate DNA and proteins, and cell biology techniques to culture cells and study the change in their morphology and physiology when they are infected with microbes. She also uses modern microscopes to observe live or preserved cells. Haralabia is fascinated by the beauty that she discovers in the interior of the cells while exploring the secrets of the microcosm.
The Hellenic Pasteur Institute specialises in biomedical research, primarily in infectious diseases and public health. There are about 80 scientists and 60 administrative employees working in her Institute. Haralabia's research team consists of eight people: researchers, technicians, and graduate students. She leads an independent research project and supervises graduate students.
In her free time, Haralabia's favourite hobbies are singing and dancing. She loves Latin American and Cuban dances and goes dancing as often as possible with a group of friends. As for singing, she adores folk songs from all cultures; for the time being she sings Greek songs with a small choir in the museum of folk art instruments in Athens. Going to the movies and listening to classical music concerts are two other loves of hers, and she indulges in them as often as possible, even after a long day's work in the laboratory. On long weekends or during the holidays, she drives with friends to the Greek mountains for hiking.
As hard as the life of a researcher might be at times, she has never regretted the path she took because she finds nothing more fascinating than exploring the secrets and the beauty of life!