Athanasia Xirogianni studied Biochemistry and Biotechnology at University of Thessaly, School of Health Sciences, Larisa, Greece. She was awarded a PhD degree in the field of Molecular Microbiology by the University of Thessaly, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, in 2010. She has been working at the National Meningitis Reference Laboratory since 2005, when she started her collaboration as a PhD student and since 2009, as a laboratory scientist. In 2020, she was selected for the position of Laboratory Teaching Staff of the Dpt of Public Health Policy, School of Public Health, University of West Attica. Her field of expertise is on the molecular diagnosis of meningitis and other bacterial infections, as well as the further research in this field (bacteria molecular identification and typing -especially N.meningitidis, H.influenzae, S.pneumoniae and other Streptococcus spp., surveillance of meningococcal disease through molecular typing of meningococcal strains, study of vaccine antigens of N.meningitidis, study of S.pneumoniae serotypes. She also works as an external collaborator-evaluator of the Hellenic Accreditation System on the ISO 15189 standard for clinical laboratories.