Meeting sciencepreneur Milica Lazić
Tell us more about your research journey?
Milica Lazić: I hold a PhD in Psychology from the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. In my thesis, I used a person-centred approach to examine the determinants of stability and change in subjective well-being using samples from Serbia, Japan and the USA. Currently, I am a research fellow at the Department of Psychology at the University of Novi Sad as well as a postdoctoral researcher in a European project.
How did you decide to explore scientific entrepreneurship?
Milica Lazić: It took me a while to figure out what I really wanted to develop. Eventually, I focused on developing evidence-based programmes on how people can change their behaviour in the health field. In this capacity, I am the co-founder of Mental Hub, a psychological centre for community mental health based in Novi Sad. Together with four other psychologists, we provide psychological support to young people with a history of psychiatric hospitalisation or other psychosocial difficulties. We create content in the cultural and educational field with the aim of raising community awareness of the problems faced by people with psychosocial difficulties. As a concrete example, we developed an application to combat obesity by using a transtheoretical model in psychology. After validating this model, we translated our knowledge and empirical data into this application.
By and large, science entrepreneurship has become a guiding principle as I am also involved, as part of my postdoctoral work, in the development of an application to improve vaccination management in hard-to-reach populations.
What stage of development is Mental Hub at?
Milica Lazić: We have a lot of face-to-face clients, whom we treat psychologically. When it comes to our structure, we have a department that deals with issues like contact with the public and policy makers, etc. Another one is made up of researchers who do research in this field and develop evidence-based programmes. What is special about our team is that we are all researchers who believe that we have to link research and practice to improve people's mental health.
