Tatjana Parac-vogt PhD

Tatjana N. Parac-Vogt was born in Belgrade (former Yugoslavia). She got her Diploma in Chemistry from the University of Belgrade with the highest distinctions in 1991. For her studies, she received the award for the best academic record from the Serbian Chemical Society and the ICN Pharmaceutical Company Award for Outstanding Diploma Work. After receiving a scholarship from the United States in 1993, she moved to Ames, Iowa, where she obtained her PhD in Chemistry from Iowa State University. During her PhD, she developed palladium and platinum complexes that functioned as artificial metallopeptidases. For this Ph.D. work, she received several awards, including a Dow Chemical Fellowship, the Iowa State University Research Excellence Award, and the International Precious Metals Institute Award for outstanding research in the field of precious metals. In 1997, she took a post-doctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley where she worked in the field of supramolecular chemistry in the group of Prof. Kenneth N. Raymond. In 1998 she received a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and moved to Germany to the group of Prof. Christian Griesinger, where she divided her time between the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the University of Frankfurt. At that time, she was involved in solving the three-dimensional structure of proteins by using multi-dimensional NMR techniques.

In 2000 she moved to the Coordination Chemistry group at KU Leuven. After a post-doctoral Fellowship from the Flemish Science Foundation (FWO), she was awarded a BOF professorship from KU Leuven in 2008. She is currently the Head of the Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry. Her main research domains are the development of contrast agents for medical imaging and the use of polyoxometalates as catalysts for biologically relevant reactions. From 2012-2016, she was the president of BeWiSe, Belgian Women in Science Association, a non-profit organization that supports the role and position of women in science and is currently a member of the BeWiSe steering committee. She has an active interest in promoting gender and cultural diversity in the working environment and is also active as a coach and mentor to younger female scientists, both in the framework of BeWiSe and within KU Leuven.