During the previous summer, good news came from Wales to Belgrade. Dr Magdalena Đorđević from the Institute of Physics Belgrade (IPB) was elected a member of the Young Academy of Europe, thus becoming a part of the most excellent active researcher’s network in the continent.
As a principal research fellow of the IPB, Dr Magdalena Đorđević studies quark-gluon plasma, together with researchers who constitute her team. This state of matter, described in quantum chromodynamics, exists only at extremely high temperatures and pressures. It is believed that it is one of the oldest states in the Universe, and its existence was experimentally confirmed around ten years ago, which has put it in the scientific limelight.
Having had a very successful career in American universities, Dr Đorđević returned to the IPB, neither changing her study field nor her interests. Therefore, she won a prestigious ERC grant in 2016, for her research on quark-gluon plasma. She became the second recipient of the ERC grant from Serbia, which garnered a lot of media attention.
The Young Academy of Europe was founded in 2012 to contribute to scientific mobility between countries of the European Union and associate members. Its members are experts and leaders in their fields, and having in mind that academicians are mostly over 50 years old, this organization brings together younger scholars to emphasize the perspective of new generations on the future of science. The official ceremony for new members, with Dr Magdalena Đorđević being one of them, is to be held in Barcelona, at the annual meeting.
Dr Đorđević and her team members are still in the public eye in Serbia. In addition to the above-mentioned ERC grant, Dr Magdalena Đorđević recently got a lot of exposure due to the high citation of her papers. To be specific, the media reported a list of domestic researchers who have appeared in the Stanford University study on 100,000 top scientists. Among other Belgrade scholars, some of which are physicists, Dr Đorđević is in both lists accompanying this study.