Maria Fotaki

Maria started her career at the EPO as a patent examiner in biotechnology in the field of gene therapy and viral vectors. She was involved in training and coaching colleagues and following up case law developments in the biopharmaceutical field. She represented the EPO in discussions with academia and industry on the ethics of patenting biotechnological inventions, including legal developments in Europe and the USA. 

 

As a director, Maria was involved in the harmonisation and quality of examination procedures. Her interest in improving procedural efficiency led her to participate as project manager in developing biotech-specialised IT tools for nucleic acid sequence analysis. She also liaised with the IP5 (an entity comprising the EPO, US, Japanese, Korean and Chinese patent offices) working group for “IT-supported Business processes”, focusing on the harmonisation of sequence data exchange. Maria finished her 27-year career at the EPO assisting customer relations with an enhanced procedure of analysis, response and internal action to users’ feedback. 

 

Before joining the EPO, Maria completed her PhD in medical biochemistry at the University of Calgary, Canada. She then worked at the Neuroscience Research Institute of Montreal General Hospital and later Hoffman LaRoche in Basel, Switzerland carrying out research into gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.