Associate Professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Hematology
Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry University of Zagreb, Croatia

Assoc. Prof. Donatella Verbanac, PhD, has been working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Haematology, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, since 2018. She teaches general and specialised courses in the field of clinical biochemistry and conducts research-based projects.

She started her career at the company PLIVA as an assistant professor and was later responsible for leading international projects in the anti-infectives and anti-inflammatories. In 2009, she became the Head of the Department of Intercellular Communication at the Centre for Translational and Clinical Research at the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb. She is a member of the Croatian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Croatian Chemical Society, Croatian Pharmacological Society, British Biochemical Society and European Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

She has authored as many as 50 original scientific papers and reviews, as well as popular articles and texts. Her greatest achievements are the two awards she has received from pharmaceutical companies PLIVA and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as recent projects approved by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) and the Croatian Agency for SMEs, Innovation and Investment (HAMAG-BICRO).
 

Medical research has always been important and will remain so. However, today we need to make our medicines available quickly and they need to be safe and effective at the same time. A lot of data has already been generated, but we still struggle to link and understand it. Only by investing our resources in expanding our knowledge in data mining can we successfully accomplish this task. Hopefully, with the help of new technologies from STEM, we should be able to find new solutions from the data we already have.