Dimitra Pouli

Dimitra Pouli saw what others could not see. A physician and scientist with a deep commitment to advancing medical science and patient care, she graduated from Athens Medical School and received the Onassis Foundation Scholarship to pursue her studies at Tufts University in Boston, where she specialized in Biomedical Engineering. She made a great “unorthodox” leap, as she points out. “When I decided to switch to engineering studies after completing medicine, the decision was considered almost incomprehensible by those around me. My inner zeal made me remain steadfast in my choice.”

Along with her team, she researched optical imaging methods using specialized lasers to enable non-invasive monitoring of human tissues. More specifically, they can have a resolution 100 times greater than the diameter of a hair. Her research has been applied to innovative practices for early skin cancer diagnosis.

Currently, she is the Director of Anatomic Pathology Informatics and Attending Dermatopathologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard University School of Medicine. Through her work, she seeks to combine clinical expertise in dermatopathology with innovative clinical informatics applications to improve diagnostic capabilities and clinical outcomes. She notes that she wants to turn “clinical competency into clinical practice.”