Maria Xilouri, PhD, received a degree in biology (1999) and a PhD in neurobiology (2007) from the University of Athens. During her graduate studies, she identified mechanisms through which neuroactive steroids exert protective effects in brain cells. Since 2006, she has been working at the Clinical, Experimental Surgery and Translational Research Center of the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as an independent investigator. The main focus of Dr. Xilouri’s research is elucidating the processes that control the accumulation and propagation of alpha-synuclein in neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and multiple system atrophy. She identified the selective lysosomal pathway of Chaperone-Mediated Autophagy (CMA) as a major route for alpha-synuclein degradation using preclinical models of PD, thus pinpointing this pathway as an attractive therapeutic target for combatting pathologies associated with alpha-synuclein.