Sofia Siest (Sophie Visvikis-Siest), PhD, was born in Athens, Greece, where she obtained a diploma of Biology. She received a PhD on Genetic Epidemiology of Cardiovascular Diseases at the University of Nancy, France.  

Director of Research in INSERM for 24 years and head of INSERM and University of Lorraine Research Units in Nancy: “Interactions Géne-Environnement en Physiopathologie Cardio-Vasculaire” (IGE-PCV) for 15 years. 

At the origin of the STANISLAS Cohort project based on 1,006 families followed for 15 years (STANISLAS Family Study, SFS). 

Founder and Leader of the VEGF Consortium with 23 partners from 9 different countries (including the US and Canada) having world-renowned scientific expertise in different but complementary fields on VEGF-A, since 2015. 

Her main Research interests are in the domain of public health, personalised medicine, prevention, genetic epidemiology, genomics and pharmacogenomics, cardio-vascular diseases, VEGF-A and inflammation. 

She has published more than 400 papers in international scientific committee journals (ORCHID ID:0000-0001-8104-8425: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8104-8425?lang=fr, Web of science Researcher ID: H-2324-2014http://www.researcherid.com/rid/, https://publons.com/researcher/2517903/sophie-visvikis-siest/publications/), 3 patents and has given over 100 international invited conferences. 

She has a long experience in obtaining and executing public, academic, industrial and EC funded projects.  

She is one of the pioneers in Biobanking founded by INSERM and ANR in France. 

She created the Biological Resources Center (BRC): “Interactions Géne-Environnement en Physiopathologie Cardio-Vasculaire” in 2002 (BRC IGE-PCV, BB-0033-00051).  

She has 20-years of experience in the prevention field due to her involvement in the Center of Preventive Medicine in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France.  

She was founding member and board member for 10 years (2011-2021) of the European Society of Pharmacogenomics and Theranostics (ESPT- www.esptnet.eu). 

She is the President of the Santorini Conferences Association (SCs) and of the “Santorini Conferences” colloquia held every 2 years since 2002 in Santorini, Greece, in the field of Genomics, Pharmacogenomics and Personalised Medicine (santoriniconference.org).