Stelios Lefkopoulos
He/Him They/Them
I am queer and gay and I am a post-doctoral researcher in biomedical science.//
I studied biology in my home country, Greece. Then I moved in Germany, at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology & Epigenetics, for my bachelor/master thesis, where I also conducted my Ph.D. studies in developmental biology and hematology. Today I am a Research Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, where I continue working in the field of hematology and stem cells. At the same time, I have made a few attempts in the field of literature and I have had two of my novels published in Greece.
Coming from a conservative country, I am dragging with me several bad memories of racism against me and zero tolerance toward similar phenomena. As a scientist both in Germany and Boston, I have faced no discrimination nor racism, which is definitely encouraging for the future of this world. I stand by the opinion that a sexual identity should never be considered irrelevant to any part of our life (work, social life, you name it), as it is not restricted within our absolutely personal moments, but it rather expands to several features of our character and is reflected in our personality. This does not make you special because you ‘re not straight. It makes you yourself, like it makes every other person regardless of what it is that shapes their personality.