Postdoctoral Fellow
Rice University
Dr. Vasiliki Kolliopoulos, also known as Aliki, received her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. She previously earned a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from The Ohio State University. Dr. Kolliopoulos’s work focuses on developing biomaterials and biomaterial models to understand cancer metastasis to bone and repair bone defects.
Dr. Kolliopoulos’s dissertation, “Employing mineralized collagen scaffolds in a patient-centric approach for improved craniomaxillofacial bone repair” focuses on the development of immunomodulatory biomaterials for bone regeneration, understanding multi-cell crosstalk in the native wound microenvironment, and examining the role of patient characteristics such as sex on the potential for bone regeneration. As a graduate student, Dr. Kolliopoulos was awarded numerous fellowships including the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the NIH-funded Chemical-Biology Interface Training Program, and the Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship.
As a Rice Academy Fellow, Dr. Kolliopoulos, working under the mentorship of Prof. Antonios Mikos, will be developing high-throughput biomaterial models for cancer to bone metastasis. She will examine the influence of material properties and therapeutic treatments on cancer progression and metastasis. Her work addresses a critical unmet need for understanding the mechanisms of cancer progression and metastasis to bone in vitro.
Outside the lab, Aliki enjoys watching K-dramas and variety shows, traveling, cooking and baking, and coloring.