The world-renowned scientist who lives in Tivat, Miodrag Grbić, Ph.D., a geneticist in the field of molecular biology and entomology, is the recipient of the Order of the Star of Karađorđe, second degree.
Yesterday, the president of that country, Aleksandar Vučić, honored him with that order on the occasion of the Statehood Day of Serbia on February 15.
This high distinction is awarded to individuals or institutions for special merits for the Republic of Serbia and its citizens in the areas of representing the state and its citizens.
The Order of the Star of Karađorđe has three degrees, it was established in October 2009, and was first awarded by decree of the President of Serbia in 2012 to the famous tennis player Novak Djokovic.
Although he was born in Novi Sad, Grbić always says that he is from Lastvoljana - a resident of the small coastal settlement of the same name near Tivat where, since 1963, he has had a house built in Donja Lastva by his parents, Dr. Vasa and Dr. Olga Grbić.
Tivat is the only place in the territory of the former Yugoslavia where Grbić has real estate because this extremely interesting scientist left these areas almost 30 years ago, due to his doctoral studies in the USA and scientific work in Canada.
Although he often travels around the world for work, Grbić spends most of his time in Toronto, Canada, or in Tivat, where this world-renowned scientist, as he says, feels most at home.
Grbić is a great lover of Boka Kotorska's natural and cultural heritage, which he tries to protect and promote in every way in the circles of his colleagues - scientists at various world universities and research centers.
A few years ago, together with an international team of scientists from Belgium, Spain, the USA and France, he launched a project to extract the genome of the Montenegrin autochthonous vine varieties vranac and raštana, and advocated for the protection of other well-known autochthonous species of plants characteristic of this area, such as the famous Grbalja pamidora, and the creation of a gene bank of seeds of various vegetable and fruit varieties from this area, in order to preserve old, original species.
His latest project is the study of DNA from bones from the tumuli in Boka dating back to the Bronze Age, in which Grbić collaborates with Kotor archaelogist Miloš Petričević and the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Grbić comes from a well-known Novi Sad family of scientists, professors and researchers.
After graduating from the Faculty of Agriculture and master's degree in Novi Sad, Grbić, with a Fulbright scholarship, went to doctoral studies in the USA.
He received his doctorate in 1995 at the "University of Madison-Wisconsin" at the Department of Embryology-Molecular Biology and Entomology, after which he went on to postdoctoral studies at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain.
Since 1998, he has been a professor at the "University of Western Ontario" in Canada and a lecturer at the Max Planck Institutes of the international association for the advancement and promotion of science of the same name.
With his wife Vojislava, originally from Novi Sad, (also a doctor of science and professor of plant genetics at the "University of Western Ontario" in Canada), Grbić launched an international project to sequence the nettle's nettle genome in 2006, funded by the US Department of Energy.
This project of his was chosen by the US Department of Energy in competition with as many as 500 other scientific projects from around the world and supported with three million dollars.
The team led by Grbić succeeded in sequencing (extracting and deciphering) the genome of the nettle weevil (a type of small spider that is a major pest on various agricultural crops and is extremely resistant to pesticides to which it easily adapts).
The damage that the stinging nettle causes annually to various crops in the world's agriculture is estimated at over a billion dollars, so the discovery made by Grbić and his team allowed scientists to intervene on the genetic level, influence the spider and to give its "attention" predominantly commercially important crops for humans, they are directed to other, less important or weedy plants.
In addition, Grbić's method paved the way for the possible use of the silk secreted by the stinging nettle, which is similar to a spider's web, although it is extremely thin, the hardness and strength of the stinging nettle silk is greater than all other silks produced by other species of spiders, so it is actually a natural nano-material.
The research of the team led by Grbić led to significant scientific conclusions - that the use of stinging nettle silk can give extraordinary results in the aviation and automotive industries (due to its lightness as a composite material), in defense technologies (ballistic protective vests), in the textile industry (parachutes, special ropes), and also in medicine as a matrix for tissue regeneration, injection of medication in micro capsules for treatment against e.g. cancer or for making artificial bones, which scientists still need to work on.
Bonus video:
