Daphne Avgousti, Ph.D.

Dr. Daphne Avgousti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and also a member of the Cancer Epigenetics group at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. She completed her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Tufts University in 2006 and her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University in 2012 where her thesis was focused on chromatin factors involved in RNAi in the model organism C. elegnas. She then joined Dr. Matthew Weitzman's as postdoctoral fellow at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania where she brought her knowledge of chromatin to virus infection and began to ask how viruses impact chromatin. She then started her independent research group at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in 2017, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. She moved to the University of Miami in 2025 where she joined the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and is an active member of the department and the Cancer Epigenetics group at SCCC.

The Avgousti Lab is focused on the mechanisms by which viruses hijack chromatin. Due to the major advancements in sequencing technologies and the expansion of the field of epigenetics, exploiting viruses to investigate chromatin biology has enormous potential. Our goal is to advance basic understanding of viral manipulation of chromatin and uncover new aspects of chromatin biology and virus infection.