A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Gordana Vunjak-Novaković

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a Serbian American engineer and currently a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University. She is the director of Columbia's Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering. Vunjak-Novakovic is a highly cited researcher, having published 235 engineering papers, two books, 45 book chapters, and 34 patents. She had also given over 150 lectures across the world. Vunjak-Novakovic is an advisor to the federal government on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, serving as chair of NIH's tissue engineering section. Vunjak-Novakovic's areas of research include tissue engineering, bioreactors, biophysical regulation, tissue development, and stem cell research.

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Vunjak received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Belgrade, in Belgrade, Serbia. After her postgraduate study in Germany, she returned as a faculty to the University of Belgrade in its Chemical Engineering Department. Before arriving at Columbia, Vunjak worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology from 1986 to 1987. She was an adjunct professor at Tufts University and from 1989 to 1992 a visiting professor in the Netherlands and MIT.

Vunjak was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2002 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. In 2007, she became the first woman engineer to receive the distinction of giving the Director's Lecture at the National Institute of Health. In 2008, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, and in 2009, she was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences. Vunjak is a recipient of the Clemson Award given by the Biomaterials Society.

"Politika" Interview (pdf 1.6 MB)

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People Directory

Borislav Stanic

Borislav Stanic is an art-lover who came to L.A. from Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), on a visit 23 years ago and decided to stay.

In Europe, he'd been an author and publisher of art books; hoping to find an L.A. museum guide for his own use, he discovered that none existed and decided to fill the gap.

His Los Angeles Attractions (Museon Publishing) is an exhaustive guide to every collection of art, artifacts and vehicles, every historic site, aquarium, botanical garden and zoo he's been able to uncover in Los Angeles County, the world may well conclude that it didn't know the half of it.

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Publishing

All Roads Lead to Jackson

Serbian American Contributions in Amador County, California, since the Gold Rush
Milina Jovanović offers a unique compilation of individual and family immigration stories that include enormous contributions to the development of California and significant community involvement. In this version of people’s history she chronicles how Serbian Americans have strengthened community, region, state, and country through the endeavors and struggles of 150 years. This book also focuses on women’s contributions that are too often overlooked. Ms. Jovanović’s study reveals that Jackson not only remains an original and symbolic home to Serbian Americans and Serbian Orthodox religion, but also an oasis where the Serbian community has preserved its positive reputation and social influence.

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