Svetlana Soković Bajić, PhD, is a molecular biologist whose research focuses on the microbiota and its impact on host health, with emphasis on probiotics. She obtained her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Biology, where in 2019 she defended her PhD thesis on lactic acid bacteria producing γ-aminobutyric acid and their role in the prevention and treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Her research initially examined the probiotic potential of lactic acid bacteria, especially GABA-producing strains, and later expanded to next-generation probiotics producing neuroactive and immunomodulatory metabolites, with potential applications in treating depression, type II diabetes, and neuroinflammatory disorders. She applies metagenomic and transcriptomic approaches to study host–microbiota interactions.

She began her career at the Laboratory for Molecular Microbiology of the IMGGE, where she now works as an Associate Research Professor in the Group for Probiotic and Microbiota–Host Interaction. During her stay at the Instituto de Productos Lácteos de Asturias, she investigated interactions of bacterial extracellular vesicles with the host, which broadened her interest in intercellular communication. She has participated in numerous national and international projects, led two sub-projects in collaboration with DSM, and is principal investigator of the TT project funded by the Innovation Fund “Gut-Brain Dairy Breakthrough: Intervention for Improved Mental Health in Type II Diabetes”. She also participates in the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia project “Psychobiotic antidepressive action: unraveling the mechanism through NMR metabolomic fingerprinting”.

She mentors one PhD dissertation and is a member of the Serbian Society for Molecular Biology, the Serbian Society for Extracellular Vesicles, and the Serbian Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.