Katarina Veljović, PhD, is a Full Research Professor of the Probiotics and Microbiota-Host Interaction Group at the IMGGE, with a research focus on molecular microbiology. She graduated in 2002 from the Faculty of Science at the University of Kragujevac, obtained her master's degree in 2006, and defended her PhD thesis entitled "Antimicrobial activity of enterococci isolated from fermented products and cloning genes for synthesis and immunity of chosen enterocin" in 2011 at the Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade.

Her scientific research focuses on studying lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from fermented products, including their probiotic properties, mechanisms of action, and applications in developing innovative probiotics. She has significantly contributed to creating starter and functional probiotic cultures with potential applications in food technology, pharmacy, medicine, and veterinary medicine. One of the probiotic starter cultures she contributed to is protected by both a national and an international patent and has received several awards. Currently, she is working on developing the first national biobank of autochthonous LAB strains (LABbank). She has supervised doctoral dissertation and several master’s theses at the Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade. She has participated in numerous national and international projects, managed projects funded by the Science Fund and the Innovation Fund, as well as several industrial R&D projects. She is a member of various scientific societies.