Nataša Veličković was born on 4 November 1971 in Belgrade. She completed her master’s degree and doctorate at the Faculty of Biology at the University of Belgrade in 2001 and 2009, respectively. From 1996 to 2010, she worked at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences “Vinča”, where she defended her doctoral thesis. Since 2010, she has been employed in the Department of Biochemistry Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”, now as a Principal Research Fellow. Dr. Veliković was a guest lecturer at course “Molecular Mechanisms of Signal Transduction” in the Bachelor’s program (2011-2019) and course “Molecular Biology of the Cell II” in the PhD program of Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade (2013-2020).

Dr. Veličković’s research interests focus on the study of pathophysiological alterations of energy metabolism in animal models of metabolic syndrome and in patients with fatty liver disease associated with metabolic dysfunction (MASLD), with an emphasis on disorders of lipid and glucose metabolism in adipose tissue and liver. Her main research topics are the characterization of animal models of metabolic syndrome, the investigation of molecular mechanisms of lipid metabolism disorders, inflammation and insulin sensitivity in disorders associated with excessive caloric diet and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Her particular research focus is on investigating the role of glucocorticoid hormones in metabolic disorders associated with obesity, PCOS and fatty liver disease, and their involvement in inflammation and insulin sensitivity in adipose tissue, liver and brain. Dr Veličković completed postdoctoral training at the Department of Physiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (2017) in the field of mass spectrometry-based lipidomics. Dr. Veličković was awarded the Prize of the Ministry of Science and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia for an outstanding contribution to science (2003) and received grants from the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) (2003), the KASKADE Network of Excellence (2005) and the FEBS Society (2009). Dr. Veličković was involved in the implementation of 8 national projects and 1 international project (joint research project of Serbia and Switzerland SCOPES, No. IZ73Z0_152331). She was also involved in 3 COST Actions (CA16112, CA18133, CA19105). Dr Veličković is a member of the Serbian Society for Molecular Biology (MolBioS), the Serbian Biochemical Society (SBD) and the Serbian Biological Society (SBS). She is co-author of 45 original research articles in international peer-reviewed journals and reviewer for over 50 articles in the SCI list. Dr Veličković actively contributes to the popularization of science and was involved in the organization of the Research Night (2018) and the Science Festival (2019).