Meet Our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2021 Winners: Danica Budinščak

Meet Our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2021 Winners: Danica Budinščak
Views:
3 years ago

Meet Our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2021 Winners: Danica Budinščak

We’re delighted to introduce the second of our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2021 winners, Danica Budinščak! Danica was chosen by our judging panel as the winner of our Lab Supporter category, which celebrates the technicians, managers and administrators who keep their labs running smoothly.

Danica is a histology technician at the Croatian Institute for Brain Research, and was nominated by 30 of her current and former colleagues who had plenty to say about her knowledge, professionalism, and unique sense of humour! She is described as an expert in her field, a ‘wizard’ when helping with experiments, and someone whose energy, spirit and enthusiasm have been the driving force of the lab for more than 30 years.

Danica began working at the Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, as a lab technician in 1975. She graduated as a laboratory diagnostics technician in 1986 and has been working as a histology technician at the Department of Anatomy since the mid-1980s, and at the Croatian Institute for Brain Research from 2000 onwards. She is highly experienced in various histochemical and histological techniques for staining human, primate and rodent brain tissue. 

We spoke to Danica about her science career, her advice for early career life scientists, and her thoughts on being named a Lab Hero…

 

Congratulations, Danica! How did it feel when you found out that so many of your colleagues had nominated you as their Lab Hero?

I was surprised to hear about the nomination because my colleagues only told me about it a couple of days before the winners were publicly announced. It feels great to be acknowledged by colleagues after so many years in the lab.

 

How did it feel when you found out you were one of our Lab Heroes winners?

Again, really surprised and happy! It was so nice to read the nominations from colleagues that I work with, as well as those who used to work with me a long time ago.

 

What are you planning to use your Hello Bio vouchers and career development grant for?

I plan to attend the MNS neuroscience conference in 2022 and purchase Hello Bio products for the lab.

 

Why do you think it’s so important to celebrate life science researchers, and what more could be done to show life scientists recognition?

It's important to celebrate their research because they build the foundations of today's medicine, but their work is rarely recognized, except in the recent health crisis. They should be admired and paid more, because unfortunately it has become normal that life scientists are underpaid.

 

Did you always want to be a scientist when you were younger, and if so, why?

When I started school, I didn't know that I was going to work in STEM, but I'm happy it turned out that way!

 

What do you enjoy most about working in STEM?

I enjoy working with young colleagues (PhD students and young scientists) and helping them in their first steps in the field. Sharing my knowledge and experience with them is very important to me and makes me happy.

 

Can you tell us a bit more about what you’re working on in the lab currently?

I'm working on human adult and fetal brain tissue: tissue processing, paraffin embedding, cutting, various histological stainings, etc.

 

What does a typical day in the lab look like for you?

I usually start my day planning the upcoming days with my collaborators and coming up with a timetable/plan of activities in the lab. Depending on the aforementioned plan, I spend the rest of the day in the lab working on tissue processing or histological stainings.

 

What advice would you give to life scientists just starting out in their careers?

I've worked with a lot of scientists in different periods of their careers and I saw them both in successful and difficult times. I would advise them to choose their field carefully because there are going to be difficult periods in any career when it's easy to lose motivation.

 

Which scientists working today do you most admire?

I would emphasize academician Ivica Kostović and professor Miloš Judaš.

________________________________

Thank you so much for speaking to us, Danica! And congratulations once again on being one of our Lab Heroes winners for 2021!

Find out more about the Croatian Institute for Brain Research here.

And you can meet our other Lab Heroes AwardsTM 2021 prize-winners here.

________________________________

If you enjoyed this article, why not check out the other resources available on our blog. We are passionate about supporting life scientists including early career life scientists and PhD students - with really low-priced reagents and biochemicals, early career scientist grants, and resources to help with both personal and professional development. We know how tough it is - so we hope you find these helpful!

More General Support for Life Scientists

For advice on writing papers, dissertations, presenting at conferences, wellbeing, PhD support, networking and lots more, we have a huge range of articles to help - just click below:

Advice and guidance for life scientists

Save up to 50% on our high purity reagents...

When you get to the stage of planning your experiments, don't forget that we offer a range of low-cost, high-purity agonists, antagonists, inhibitors, activators, antibodies and fluorescent tools (yes - they really are around half the price of other suppliers!) You can use our Quick Multi-Search Tool to search for lots of products in one go, and the range includes:

 

Save 50% on synaptic signaling tools, GPCR ligands, ion channel modulators, signaling & stem cell tools

 

Technical resources

Try our Molarity Calculator: a quick and easy way to calculate the mass, volume or concentration required for making a solution.

Molarity Calculator

Try our Dilution Calculator: an easy way to work out how to dilute stock solutions of known concentrationsDilution Calculator

And finally, don't forget to check back in with our blog regularly for our latest articles. If there’s something you’d love to contribute to the community, whether that’s an interview or article, drop us a line at hello@hellobio.com

---