About
Dr Aphrodite Vasilaki is a Senior lecturer and previously an independently-funded Research into Ageing Fellow. She graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Biology from Liverpool John Moores University in 1999 and completed her PhD in the Department of Medicine and School of Biological Sciences at the University of Liverpool in 2003. She has extensive experience of studying skeletal muscle ageing in experimental models. She has developed expertise in the quantification and assessment of axon-neuromuscular junction (NMJ) structure in ageing muscle. She has examined the role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during ageing for over 20 years predominantly in muscle and neuronal cells.
More recently, she has focused her work on studying the effect of maternal/neonatal protein restriction on the development of the neuromuscular and musculoskeletal systems and the life long impact that protein restriction in early life may have on these systems. She has now established her own research group in this area.
In 2012, Aphrodite received the Catherine Pasquier award and more recently the Leopold Flohé Redox Pioneer Young Investigator Award (2025), the only UK recipient of the latter.
Aphrodite served as Treasurer for the British Society for Research on Ageing from 2007-2010. She also served as Treasurer for the Society for Free Radical Research - Europe from 2017-2024.
Aphrodite is currently the Supra-Theme Lead for Science and Scholarship in the School of Medicine and the Deputy Institute Director of Postgraduate Research in the Institute of Lifecourse and Medical Sciences.
Funded Fellowships
- Personal Fellowship (Research Into Ageing, 2010)