Dr Ankica Kondić Špika is working at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops as a Head of Laboratory for Biotechnology. She has 25 years of professional experience in the field of application of different biotechnological methods in small grains breeding.
She graduated at the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad in 1994, and received her Master’s degree at the same faculty in 1999 on Genetics and Plant Breeding. She performed one-year specialization in the field of molecular biology and plant transformation in the period 2000–2001 at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India, supervised by Prof. Dr. S. K. Sopory. Defended her doctoral dissertation from the same field in 2005 at the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad.
From 1995 to 2001 she worked at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, as a scholar of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Serbia. Her employment as biotechnologist at the Institute started in 2001 at the Department for Small Grains. She was the project manager of two national projects and coordinator of the team from the Institute in five international projects from different programs (FP7, COST, EPPN, EMPHASIS). She is a member of Editorial Board of national journal “Ratarstvo i povrtarstvo”, as well as of international journal “Genetika”. Authored and co-authored more than 260 scientific papers, co-authored one monograph and a chapter in a monograph of national significance. She is a member of FESPB, EUCARPIA and Serbian Genetics Society.
Head of Biotechnology Department was in the period 2012-2017, while the Head of Laboratory for Biotechnology within the Department for Small Grains was since February 2017.