Urania Dafni gained her Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Patras, Greece, she then attended the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA and achieved the Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering and in Statistics. In 1993, she gained her Doctor of Science degree in Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA.

She is currently Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Athens, Greece, Director of Frontier Science Foundation-Hellas (FSF-H) and Group Statistician for the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP). She has been the Statistics Editor of the journal Lung Cancer since 2013 and contributed to the ASCO Scientific Program Committee (2013-2016), and the International Biometric Society (IBS) Education Committee (2010-2016).

She is on the editorial board for ESMO Open, and is a member of the ESMO Faculty for the Principles of Clinical Trials and the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale Working Group.

Prof Dafni was one of the founding members of the Eastern Mediterranean Region of IBS (EMR-IBS; 2001), President of EMR-IBS (2005-2007), and the Editorial Representative member of the Executive Committee of IBS (2007-2011). She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention (HCDCP), Ministry of Health (2015-2018). She has participated as member of the IDMC or as senior statistician in numerous Oncology Clinical Trials, and her research interests include surrogate markers, multivariate count data, adaptive trial design and methods accounting for crossover.