The main scientific interest of Marija Mihailovic is understanding how dysregulation in protein synthesis (mRNA translation) contributes to human diseases, mainly neuropsychiatric disorders, with the aim of discovering new means of prevention, patient stratification, and treatments. Following extensive training in the field of translation regulation during her PhD (San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy and EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany) and the first post-doc (The Centre for Genomic Regulation, CRG, Barcelona, Spain), she moved first to the proteomics field (European Institute of Oncology, IEO, Milan, Italy) and then to the disease modelling and neurogenomics group (IEO and Human Technopole, Milan, Italy). In both groups, her interest and know-how in translational regulation enabled her to channel her research towards the contribution of deregulated protein synthesis/RNA biology to human diseases. In September 2023, Marija joined the IMGGE and the Probiotics and Microbiota-Host Interaction group. She is exploring how microbiota influences gene expression at the RNA level, from splicing to translation regulation in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Additionally, she aims to develop a microbiota-dependent metabolite drug screening pipeline focused on brain disorders.