Dr. Maria S. Shmelkova was born in 1987 in Rostov, Russia. In 2004, she entered Moscow State University's Faculty of Fundamental Medicine, graduating successfully in 2009. In 2009, she entered the Russian National Research Medical Institute (Moscow, Russia), Faculty of General Medicine, and successfully graduated in 2017. In 2017, she entered the PhD program at the National Research Institute for Eye Diseases (Moscow, Russia). The theme of her PhD study was Hereditary Optic Neuropathies: clinical, biological, and genetic aspects. In 2018, she attended the Eye Genetics course at the University of Bologna, Italy. From 2021 to 2023, she held a fellowship in the Retina and Optic Nerve Department of the University Clinic of Nice, France. In 2024, she successfully accomplished the Harvard Medical School Course of Human Genetics. Currently, she serves as an ophthalmologist and research fellow at the National Medical Research Center for Neurosurgery named after N.N. Burdenko in Moscow, Russia. Intraocular lymphomas comprise a part of her scientific interests. Dr. Maria Shmelkova speaks English, French, Italian, and Russian fluently.