Dr. Milica Bogdanović

Milica Bogdanović is a Senior Reseach Associate at the Plant Physiology department of IBISS. She defended a PhD in 2015. in Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, studying chicory plant secondary metabolism, molecular biology of guaianolide biosynthesis and metabolic engineering of the terpene pathway. She was a key member and a team leader in one Horizon2020 (“Chicory as a multipurpose crop for dietary fibre and medicinal terpenes — CHIC”) and one FP7 project (“TERPMED - Plant Terpenoids for human health: a chemical and genomic approach to identify and produce bioactive compounds”) as well as several projects funded by Serbian Ministry for Science, Technological Development and Innovations. Dr Bogdanović has an active collaboration with European colleagues in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy, as well as her Serbian colleagues. Dr Bogdanović participated in research visits to Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands) in 2011 and 2012, as well as workshops in Belgium, China, Germany and Portugal. Dr Bogdanović is highly skilled in methods of in vitro plant, tissue and organ culture, plant stable and transient genetic transformation, DNA cloning techniques, fluorescent and confocal microscopy, various PCR methods, amiRNA silencing, promoter-reporter analysis, genome editing CRISPR-cas9 experiments, genotyping mutations and various computer-assisted research techniques. Dr Bogdanović was a mentor of one PhD student at the University of Belgrade, and is a member of several professional organizations, including DFBS, EU-SAGE and GeneSprouts, as well as COST action PlantEd no. 18111 (Genome Editing in Plants). Her focus in recent years has been studying molecular basis of somatic embryogenesis (SE) in centaury, a model plant for developmental studies, discovery of new genes involved in SE and improving upon existing in vitro protocols for this species. Lately she is interested in plant-to-plant interactions, especially priming plant defenses with volatile compounds of neighboring plants.