Despina Voulgaraki

Despina Voulgaraki, PhD, is the Senior Director of Clinical Research & Medical Science for Western Europe Enterprise Accounts at Medtronic.

With over two decades in preclinical and clinical research, medical affairs, and medical education, Despina's work spans academia and the MedTech industry, focusing on cardiovascular, neurological, and autoimmune diseases, and with extensive R&D work on hepatology, and oncology too. She has a high level of expertise across the product lifecycle, from the preclinical and clinical development stages to post-approval phase, with work encompassing trial design and conduct, evidence generation and synthesis, development of regulatory and market access strategies, with strong focus on outcome correlation and successful regulatory and HTA submissions across all regions/globally. 

Despina earned her MSc in Molecular Medicine from Imperial College London, a PhD in Immunology and Pathology from the University of Oxford. She retrained mid-career in Public Health at Maastricht University with a focus on Health Policy, Innovation, and Management.

Her current work is focused on building clinical and scientific engagement and partnerships with centres of clinical research and scientific excellence across Western Europe.