News & Updates

On 20.8.2024., Dr Rumiana Dimova visited RBI to meet with Dr Bakarić as a part of the German-Croatian bilateral project "The impact of myelin basic protein on the phase state, morphology and membrane structure" (DAAD-MZO). Dr Dimova also held a lecture titled "Membrane remodeling in artificial cells: When a membrane meets a drop". Lecture abstract: Cell membranes exhibit a large variation in curvature. While it is commonly perceived that this curvature is primarily driven by

PhD student Petra Maleš won the MOBDOK-2023 scholarship from the Croatian Science Foundation for a three-month research stay at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Austria. From April to July 2024, she was working on the structural analysis techniques for the characterization of model myelin membranes, under the supervision of Prof Georg Pabst.

On Tuesday May 28th 2024, PhD student Lea Pašalić held a lecture titled: 'The preparation of asymmetric lipid membranes and their characterization with fluorescence spectroscopy'. She presented the results of her research work at J. Heyrovsky Institute for Physical Chemistry, Prague, Czechia.

Dr Barbara Pem started a one-year postdoctoral research on March 1, 2024. She joined the group of Prof Chris Oostenbrink at the Institute of Molecular Modeling and Simulation (MMS) in Vienna, Austria. The postdoctoral research is partially covered by the Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities (JESH) scholarship, which Barbara won with the project titled "Computational alchemy of model biological membranes: free energy calculations towards enhanced sampling of mixed lipid

PhD student Petra Males held a lecture at the XV. meeting of young chemical engineers 2024 on February 22, 2024 in Zagreb. In the lecture titled "The Significance of Cholesterol for Myelin Lipid Phases", Petra presented part of her research, which she conducts as part of her doctoral dissertation.

On December 15th 2023, postdoctoral reseacher Barbara Pem held a public lecture organized by the Department of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry titled "Organization and interactions of phospholipid bilayers as biomembrane models". In this lecture she presented the results of her computational research conducted during her two-year post-doc period in the Laboratory for Engineering of Biomembranes. In addition, she presented the results of two short-term research stays abroad

Postdoctoral researcher Barbara Pem was awarded a scholarship from RBI Director and French Embassy in Croatia for a short-term research stay in France. The scholarship enabled the one-month stay at the Institut des Molécules et des Matériaux du Mans, Le Mans, France with the host Prof. Marc Lamy de la Chapelle. From November 13th to December 12th, she conducted experiments to optimize the synthesis of gold nanoparticles encapsulated with liposomes, and to characterize said co

Postdoctoral researcher Barbara Pem was awarded a scholarship from RBI Director for a short-term research stay abroad. The scholarship enabled the one-month stay at the . Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry i Prague, Czech Republic with the host Prof. Lukasz Cwiklik. From October 1st to 29th, she conducted experiments to study the interaction of various ligands (small molecules, peptides or polystyrene) on lipid monolayers at the water/air interface, using the technique

Nikolina Groznica, a student from the Faculty of Science in Zagreb, joined LEB as a student researcher working on a project for her master thesis. She is mentored by Dr Bakarić, with Lea Pašalić as her direct supervisor. She is working on the characterization of peptide-lipid interactions.

Postdoctoral researcher Barbara Pem participated in the symposium Computational Chemistry Day 2023, held on September 16th in Zagreb, Croatia. Dr Pem presented a poster titled "Structural Differences of Symmetric and Asymmetric Mixed-Lipid Bilayers Observed by Classical Molecular Dynamics", where she showed the comparison of the simulations of symmetric and asymmetric mixed-lipid bilayers.

PhD student Petra Maleš participated in the 12th International Conference on Advanced Vibrational Spectroscopy, held from August 27th to September 1st 2023 in Krakow, Poland. She presented a poster titled "The revelation of interactions in model myelin with FTIR spectroscopy", showing her experience in lipid membrane research by infrared spectroscopy. Her hard work was rewarded with the Best Poster Award given by the conference organizing committee. Congratulations! The confe