Dr. Stefanakis graduated from University of Athens, Greece with a B.S. in Biology. He then moved to Columbia University in New York for his PhD studies. His PhD thesis with Prof. Oliver Hobert focused on studying gene regulation in the nervous system of the nematode C. elegans. More specifically his studies revealed a common organization principle governing regulation of pan-neuronal gene expression, which is fundamentally different from expression control of neuron-type specific genes. The results of this work were published in 2015 in the journal Neuron. In 2016, Dr. Stefanakis joined the laboratory of Prof. Shai Shaham at Rockefeller University. As a Leon-Levy fellow he is taking advantage of the genetic amenability of C. elegans as model system to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms of glial activities at Neuromuscular Junctions.
