Dr. Dragana Matekalo

Dr. Dragana Matekalo (née Božić) has been working at the Institute since 2007. After graduating from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Belgrade, she obtained her MSc and PhD degrees from the same faculty. She carried out the experimental part of her doctoral thesis in the Pharmacognosy Laboratory of the Faculty of Pharmacy (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece). Her research focuses on plants specialized metabolites, the molecular background of their biosynthetic regulation and metabolic engineering. Her multidisciplinary scientific approach and collaborations with researchers from Serbia and abroad (Greece, Netherlands, Germany) resulted in a considerable number of publications in SCI journals. During her career, she has been involved in two national and two international projects. Dr. Matekalo has been a member of the organizing committees of prestigious national and international conferences, including those organized by the Serbian Plant Physiology Society and TERPNET. She is a member of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB) and the Serbian Plant Physiology Society (SPPS). She was a supervisor of one PhD thesis and one MSc thesis. Dragana is dedicated to the promotion of science to the public and participated in events such as the European Researchers’ Night, Science Festival, Fascination of Plants Day, Friendship Games and various activities of the Center for the Promotion of Science(Serbia). She translated a popular science book entitled “What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses” (author Daniel Chamovitz) into Serbian.