Women Who are Changing Science

Prof. Rima Al-awar founded the OICR Drug Discovery Program in 2008. The Drug Discovery group, is comprised of dozens of researchers with deep industry expertise, focuses on translating the most promising ideas coming from Ontario’s academic community into therapeutic benefits for cancer patients by identifying hit and lead molecules and optimizing them as potential drug candidates. Prof. Al-awar earned her Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from North Carolina State University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prior to joining Eli Lilly and Company in 1995. During her time at Eli Lilly, she served as Head in Discovery Chemistry Research and Technologies, and later as Head in Route Selection in Chemical Product Research and Development. Prof. Al-awar is a full Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Toxicology as well as Chemistry, at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Gruenheid obtained her doctorate degree from McGill University, where she studied mechanisms of innate host resistance to infection, under the mentorship of Dr. Philippe Gros. She undertook postdoctoral studies with Dr. Brett Finlay at the University of British Columbia, where she identified and characterized virulence factors of enteropathogenic bacteria. Currently, she is a Professor and first female Chair of the McGill Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Her research includes investigation of host-pathogen interactions governing intestinal infections and the development of new mouse models to study the emerging role of intestinal inflammation in Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Gruenheid has been a recipient of a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2), a Senior Research Scholar award from the Fonds de Recherche du Quebec, and is a fellow of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology.

Prof. Vanda Juranić Lisnić is associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka Croatia. She obtained her Master’s degree in Biotechnology from the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, University of Zagreb in 2006. and Ph.D. from Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka. Her main interest is basic biology and immunology and the pathogenesis of viral infections, with special emphasis on cytomegalovirus. To study that, she utilizes a mouse model of CMV infection, combining high-throughput sequencing with classical molecular biology and immunology techniques. She has discovered and characterized several new CMV transcripts, genes, and proteins and demonstrated novel immunoevasion mechanisms. In addition, she and her team performed one of the first systematic investigations of the impact of CMV on ovaries and fertility. For her work, Vanda received multiple awards, most notable being the State Award for Science in 2022. She has held two Croatian Science foundation grants, 2 German Science foundation (DFG) collaborative grants, as well as several University of Rijeka Science Foundation grants.

Adrijana Vinter holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Zagreb and an MBA from Cotrugli Business School. In addition to her professional roles, she is dedicated to mentoring young professionals and start-ups and enhancing the scientific community in Croatia. She has co-authored several scientific papers and is an active co-organizer and lecturer at various conferences. Adrijana Vinter, is the Global Head of Drug Discovery at Selvita and a member of the Selvita Management Board. She leads a multidisciplinary team of over 500 scientists across Europe, the UK, and the US and oversees the scientific and strategic development of drug discovery services. Before joining Selvita, Adrijana Vinter worked as a medicinal chemist at PLIVA, GSK, and Galapagos. She later transitioned into business development with the formation of Fidelta, where she served as Managing Director from 2016. Under her leadership, Fidelta achieved significant growth, eventually leading to its acquisition by Selvita.

Andreja Ambriović Ristov is Tenured Senior Scientist at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI), Zagreb, Croatia. She graduated from the University of Zagreb and completed her PhD in 1997 on DNA and adenovirus vectored vaccines. She accomplished the parts of her PhD and postdoctoral training in Maisons Alfort National Veterinary School, France. From 2016-2022, she was the head of Division of Molecular Biology. She is the head of the Laboratory for Cell Biology and Signalling since 2016. She is actively involved in teaching at both national and international levels (as a visiting professor in France and Italy), management of scientific projects, mentoring of PhD students and the organization of conferences. She was the main editor of the book Methods in Molecular Biology, in Croatian, which won the Josip Juraj Strossmayer Award in 2008. She established, and conducted for 10 years, the methodological courses in biology and medicine for which she received an award from the director of the Ruđer Bošković Institute in 2004. She is the co-author of PCT application for a method to detect any known or unknown virus and is currently working on the development of the method with the aim of its commercialization. She was a member of the Scientific Council of the Government of the Republic of Croatia for the COVID-19 epidemic. Since 2014, her work has primarily focused on the molecular composition of integrin adhesion complexes and their role in cancer cells.

Prof. Rosa Karlić earned a diploma in molecular biology in 2006 from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb. From 2007 to 2011 she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, where she obtained a PhD in bioinformatics. Currently, she is an associate professor in the Bioinformatics Group at the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb. Her scientific work is focused on the research of transcription regulation, epigenetics and tumor genomics, as well as the genomics of tumor development and differentiation, with an emphasis on the use of machine learning methods for the analysis and interpretation of biological data. She is a member of numerous international collaborations such as Roadmap Epigenomics, Pan Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium and International Cancer Genome Consortium – Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ICGC-ARGO) consortium. Prof. Rosa Karlić is winner of several prestigious awards, including the L’Oreal Adria-UNESCO National Scholarship “For Women in Science” (2011) and the State Prize for Science in 2015.