Marija Švirtlih, PhD, is a Full Research Professor, a molecular biologist specializing in developmental neurobiology. She obtained a graduation degree in Molecular Biology and Physiology in 1998 from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Biology. Her PhD dissertation, earned in 2010 in Medical Sciences from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, focused on the functionality of GABA signaling during development using embryonic stem cells and embryonic ocular lenses as a model system. Before joining the IMGGE in 2012, she spent three years in the Department of Neurobiology at the Institute for Biological Research “Sinisa Stankovic” in Belgrade, Serbia, and over a decade in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. Her recent work includes investigating molecular mechanisms involved in embryonic and adult neurogenesis and the development of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease. She was a principal investigator of the Project NEURAD - Testing neurogenic potential of induced pluripotent stem cells derived from Alzheimer’s disease patients, under the Serbian Science and Diaspora Collaboration Program: Knowledge Exchange Vouchers, funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia. She has supervised four master’s theses and currently one doctoral dissertation.

She is intensively involved in scientific education and communication, collaborating in this area with the Faculty of Biology and the School of Medicine at the University of Belgrade. She has conducted numerous training sessions and workshops in the field of confocal microscopy and has been a guest lecturer on this topic since 2015. She is a member of multiple scientific communities and a participant in national and international projects.