Marilena Melas, MSc, PhD
AspireMED Supervisor - Genetics 

Dr. Marilena Melas earned her doctoral degree in Cancer Biology and Genomics at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles in May 2019. She earned her BSc degree in Applied Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Ioannina, Greece. She also holds two MSc degrees; The first one in Molecular Medicine at the University of Crete, Greece, and the second one in Genetics of Human Diseases at the University College London, UK. Currently, she is a second-year ABMGG Clinical Laboratory Genetics and Genomics (LGG) Fellow at the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus Ohio. She is interested in the implementation of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology in Precision Medicine and best practices for clinical genomic testing. In December 2019 she got selected as a TEDx Columbus Women speaker for the event Bold and Brilliant, where she shared the idea of Personalized Medicine and how our genome can improve our healthcare. Since May 2020, she serves as a Junior Member of the Cancer Genomics Consortium Communications Committee. She also serves as an ambassador representing Columbus, for the 2020 ResearcHERs: Women Fighting Cancer campaign launched by the American Cancer Society. Upon completion of her fellowship in 2021, her career goal is to become a Clinical Laboratory Director focusing on Molecular Diagnostics and the translation of genomic discoveries into clinical and therapeutic applications in the field of Personalized Genomic Medicine helping patients and their families.