Marta Sikora-Polaczek, PhD

Marta Sikora-Polaczek has been involved in embryology at TFP Fertility Macierzyństwo since 2005 and has been IVF laboratory manager since 2014. She is also the director of the IVF laboratories in the Polish clinics of the TFP group. She knew that she would become an embryologist already at the age of 9 when reading a textbook on embryology while she was waiting for the birth of her younger brother. During her education, she observed the establishment of infertility treatment clinics in Poland.

Marta is always driven to know more - that is why she has not stopped her education so far (completing doctoral studies, postgraduate studies, specialisation in medical laboratory genetics), and her need to share her knowledge leads her to regularly run embryology workshops with inexhaustible enthusiasm. She is also committed to continuous improvement - introducing new equipment and techniques and discussing results with other laboratories. An embryologist's work will never be treated routinely. Everything she does, she does with full commitment and great passion. Building and continuous development of the team of embryologists is also her merit.

She graduated from the Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, in the Department of Embryology, defending her bachelor's thesis on the mechanisms of fertilization and master's thesis on the regulation of the first embryonic divisions. She gained professional experience at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Development and Evolution at the Institute of Experimental Biology PAS in Warsaw and the Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding PAS in Jastrzêbiec. She prepared and defended her doctoral dissertation on the influence of curcumin on preimplantation embryo division at the Department of Genetics, Jagiellonian University in Cracow. To broaden her qualifications, she completed postgraduate studies in medical analytics at the Jagiellonian University Medical College with the title and qualifications of laboratory diagnostician.

She is a certified ESHRE clinical embryologist, ESHRE senior clinical embryologist, and a certified clinical embryologist of the Polish Society for Reproductive Medicine, which are the only documents verifying embryological qualifications in Poland.

She leads an active scientific life publishing in opinion-forming international journals, among others: Reproduction Biology, Molecular Cell Endocrinology, The International Journal of Developmental Biology, Cell Proliferation, and Pharmacological Reports. She presents her research results during scientific conferences. She actively participates in the organisation of training symposia of the TFP Fertility Macierzyństwo, including a cyclical conference "Infertility - the road to motherhood".