Dr. Aikaterini Termentzi

Health Sciences

Dr Aikaterini Termentzi Teaching and Research Faculty Member in Pharmacognosy, UNIC Athens Dr Aikaterini Termentzi is a Teaching and Research Faculty Member in Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry at the Department of Health Sciences, School of Life and Health Sciences, UNIC Athens. Her expertise focuses on bioactive natural products, phytochemical analysis and the application of advanced analytical techniques to the discovery, characterization and quality control of natural compounds. She holds a PhD with honors in Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry from the School of Pharmacy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2008), where she also obtained her undergraduate degree in Agriculture (2002). Dr Termentzi has more than two decades of research experience in Universities and Research Institutes in Greece, France and the United States. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Laboratoire de Pharmacognosie of Université Paris Descartes , where she held a n excellence fellowship from the City of Paris. She subsequently worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her international experience includes collaboration with the R&D department of HITEX in France and a visiting research appointment at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, where she investigated bioactive natural products produced through biotechnology. Before joining UNIC Athens, she held a tenure Senior Research position at the laboratory of Toxicological Control of Pesticides at t he Benaki Phytopathological Institute. Her research encompasses the extraction, isolation, purification and structural elucidation of natural compounds, with particular emphasis on their potential pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetic applications. She has extensive experience in liquid chromatography coupled with high -resolution mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. By combining these techniques with metabolomics and chemometric approaches, she investigates complex natural mixtures, identifies bioactive constituents and explores relationships between chemical composition and biological activity. A substantial part of her work concerns Greek and Mediterranean biodiversity, including medicinal and aromatic plants, olive bioactive compounds, Chios mastic gum, propolis and cannabinoids. Her research also extends to microbial and marine natural product s and the influence of plant –microorganism interactions on secondary metabolite production. Alongside these activities, she has developed and validated analytical methods for natural products characterization and quality control, including methods accredited under ISO 17025. She has contributed to the preparation and implementation of numerous European and Nationally funded research projects. She has been involved in student mentoring since 2006 and has contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate training in analytical techniques. She has served on doctoral advisory committees for research on bioactive natural products. Her educational approach draws on extensive laboratory experience, connecting the principles of Pharmacognosy with contemporary analytical methods. She is a reviewer for i nternational

scientific journals and research proposals for funding organizations, such as the French National Research Agency (ANR). Dr Termentzi has authored and co-authored 42 Scientific Articles and Book Chapters in peer- reviewed journals as well as numerous confer ence presentations on natural products chemistry and related fields. Her work has appeared in journals including Food Chemistry, Planta Medica and Nature Immunology. She has a Scopus h-index of 23.