School of Medicine, Ilia State University

Prof. Ekaterine Berishvili obtained her MD and Ph.D. degrees in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1999 and 2003. Between 2003 and 2014, she held research fellow and visiting professor positions at the Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami (Prof. Camillo Ricordi) and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York (Prof. Sanjeev Gupta). She was promoted to Associate Professor at Tbilisi State Medical University (2008-2014) and is currently holding an associate professorship at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. She has been working as a scientific collaborator in the department of surgery at the University of Geneva since 2014 and was appointed in 2020 as a leader of the research group of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration in the Department of Surgery.

Her scientific interest is focused on developing innovative cell-based therapies for type 1 diabetes, combining the principles of tissue bioengineering and surgical sciences to create bio-artificial organs. She is developing three-dimensional (3D) tissue models, which accurately mimic the native organ and have the potential for biomedical applications. She has built a scientific consortium with European universities and corporate partners, funded by the H2020 program. She is also a member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) beta cell replacement consortium and holds a JDRF research grant to develop a bio-artificial endocrine pancreas.