Mirna Mrkonjić Fuka, Croatia

Assist. Prof. Mirna Mrkonjić Fuka is the Head of the Department of Microbiology at the Faculty of Agriculture University of Zagreb, Croatia.

The main areas of her scientific interest are analysis of functional and structural diversity of bacterial communities in complex ecosystems (especially artisan food products), molecular typing of lactic acid bacteria and analysis regarding to sources of antibiotic resistance in food chain.

She obtained PhD at Technical University Munich working on structural and functional diversity of proteolytic bacteria in soil in 2007. She is gaining several grants and awards (DAAD, FEMS, ERASMUS, CEEPUS) for her scientific and academic work and participating in several international (Tempus IV Program (2015-2017), See-Era. Net Plus (2010-2012), European Regional Development Fund (2006-2007), DFG-German Research Foundation (2002-2005)) and national projects (MZOS 2007-2013) of which she was leader of two bilateral projects with Germany (2012-2013) and Austria (2014-2015) and the leader of the project founded by Croatian Science Foundation (2014-2017).

Currently her working group focuses on the bacterial diversity of game meat sausages (applying culture dependent and independent microbiological tools) and on characterization and selection of food beneficial microbiota for the application as bioprotective cultures.