PhD student Selma Zukić received the Dora Plus grant from the Government of Estonia at the University of Tartu

Selma Zukić, PhD student at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sarajevo, has received a Dora Plus grant from the Government of Estonia, supported by the EU Regional Development Fund at the prestigious University of Tartu, for conducting research in the field of molecular technology and cheminformatics in the development of rational drug design.
 
The opportunity to collaborate with the University of Tartu and the Institute of Chemistry in Molecular Technology arose from Selma Zukić's participation in international scientific conferences, at which she presented some of the research findings as part of her doctoral thesis, and thus contacted leading experts from this institute. Dr. Uko Maran, invited Selma Zukić to cooperate after which she received a Dora Plus grant and an opportunity to study at the University of Tartu. The University of Tartu is among the 1.2% of the most cited universities in the world, with its current position as one of the top 300 universities in the field of science.

Selma Zukić started her PhD at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sarajevo, with Prof. Dr. Davorka Završnik. The initial cooperation with the University of Belgrade, where most of the doctoral dissertation was done, was a springboard for the further development of this field, which has not yet been developed at our university, primarily due to lack of funds. This scientific area is a combination of software calculations in designing potential new drugs. The Chair of Molecular Technology at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Tartu in Estonia is one of the leading research institutions in the field of computational chemistry and rational drug design.
 
Head of research team, Dr. Uko Maran, PhD (https://www.etis.ee/CV/Uko_Maran/eng) has research interests in theoretical and computational chemistry, cheminformatics and predictive modeling in chemistry and related fields such as toxicology, biomedicine, computer aided drug design (Computer-aided Drug Design), Structure-based Drug Design, Biotechnology and Molecular Engineering.

Thanks to the aforementioned collaborations in the field of molecular modeling and rational drug design, the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Sarajevo has been given the opportunity to develop this demanding research field with new software packages and methods.
 
Selma Zukić, PhD candidate has created an opportunity for further development of this field in our scientific circles, thanks to new ideas, opportunities and mentioned collaborations. Thanks to the started cooperation, the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina was placed next to the flags of other partners at the Department of Molecular Technology, Institute of Chemistry, University of Tartu.