Professor Dr. Ioana Berindan-Neagoe

Professor Ioana Berindan-Neagoe is Professor of Medical Biotechnology at the “Iuliu Hațieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMFCN), Cluj-Napoca, with expertise in cellular and molecular biology, RNA biology, and non-coding RNAs.

In 2006, she joined UMFCN as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology, where she established the first microarray laboratory in Romania. In 2010, with financial support from POSCCE, she founded the Research Center for Functional Genomics, Biomedicine and Translational Medicine, further advancing the omics field in Romania.

From the beginning of her career, she has been committed to mentoring young scientists and promoting scientific excellence. In 2014, she became a Habilitated Professor in Medicine within the Doctoral School, where she developed and introduced Medical Biotechnology as a new discipline for PhD students.

Her work has focused on cancer research, particularly on developing new concepts for cancer diagnosis and therapy, and she has published more than 450 scientific papers. As the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Fellowship Award, she spent more than two years at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, one of the world’s leading cancer research institutions. After completing one year there as a Fulbright fellow working on non-coding RNAs in cancer, she was appointed Visiting Professor at the same institution for an additional 18 months.

Professor Berindan-Neagoe has extensive managerial experience, having secured over 40 national and international grants, including 10 within the European Framework Programmes and one INTERREG Danube project involving 24 partners. She has led several major projects, including two Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE projects focused on training young investigators, and has built a dynamic team of young researchers working in cancer cell biology. The total funding she has attracted exceeds 20 million euros, and she has coordinated the work of more than 50 researchers, PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and senior scientists.