Who can be my mentor?
Teaching staff in the laboratory with professor titles (Full Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor) can be mentors of MA and PhD theses, as well as co-mentors on a thesis together with a principal mentor from our institution or elsewhere.
Senior research staff (Research Associate, Senior Research Associate, Principal Research Fellow) can be co-mentors together with a principal mentor from the laboratory or elsewhere.
What can I choose as my topic?
In LNPK, you are encouraged to explore your interests and come up with a topic that you are truly excited about with the help from your mentor. You can also get involved in the existing research in the lab, though PhD students are typically expected to go beyond executing research that has been designed and planned by their mentor. Finally, you can contact us if you already have a specific research topic in mind and you are in search of a suitable mentor to support you in conducting your research project.
It is desirable that your topic can be studied using laboratory resources, but we are sometimes able to go beyond them through our network of collaborators, so don’t be shy to ask!
In any case, the topic needs to fall within the broad field of interest and expertise of your prospective mentor.
What can I expect as a mentee in LNPK?
Comprehensive training in academic skills – from core skills such as making sense of the existing body of research to practicalities such as disseminating your own results in line with the latest standards of publication practices.
Training in research ethics. Navigating academia requires a nuanced understanding of many ethical factors that underlie even seemingly simple, everyday choices such as credit attribution. Good mentorship can help you spot and understand these factors in order to make more ethical choices, a skill transferable and valuable in other life settings, too.
Plenty of one-on-one time with your mentor. At any given moment, we cap the number our of mentees to what we can handle without compromising our capacity to support each mentee.
Peer support. Like in many laboratories, collaboration is highly valued in LNPK, and you will have access to support from other laboratory members, senior and junior alike – from advice to having extra hands at disposal when doing data collection or analysis.
External support. In LNPK, we are lucky to have a network of invaluable collaborators outside of our lab. In the past, they have regularly advised our students on specific questions, shared resources with them, and hosted them in their laboratories to conduct research or receive training.
Emphasis on quality. On top of what is mentioned above, we take additional steps to ensure quality of theses coming from our laboratory. For example, for PhD theses, we strive to always have notable experts in the field serve as defense committee members. As a result, our mentees regularly present their work at well-respected conferences and publish results of their graduate work in influential journals, and some of them have also received awards for their graduate work (Award of Foundation Katarina Marić for the best master thesis received by Jelena Sučević, University of Belgrade Đoka Vlajković Endownment award for the best scientific work by young researchers at the university, received by Anđela Šoškić).
Career development support. As a mentee of the Laboratory, you will receive support in securing the next steps in your career, from help with researching and securing funding and positions, to opportunities for international training, exchanges, or results dissemination, which will make getting where you want easier.
Post-graduation support. Once you graduate from LNPK, its resources will remain available to you when you need them, be it a desk to sit at while you are job hunting or a place and equipment to conduct your own research.
Patience, understanding, and support when things get tough. It would be nice if completing your studies were always easy, but sometimes life can be rough, especially during PhD studies, which span multiple years. In LNPK, you will find mentors willing to be supportive during such times, as well as to give you time and space to complete your graduate thesis on your own timeline.
Our mentees
Many of our mentees have gone on to have successful careers in prestigious roles, regardless of whether they stayed in academia or transitioned to industry, or whether they stayed in Serbia or moved abroad. You can look them up on our Alumni page, and if you become a mentee yourself, it is very likely that you will meet at least some of them. Our past mentees tend to like to “come back home” even if only to check in, and we like to make sure that they feel welcome to do so.