Dr. Marija CVETANOVIC is an Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota. She received her BSc in Molecular Biology and Physiology from the University of Belgrade in 1998. She completed her PhD with Dr. David Ucker, at the Department of Immunology, Microbiology and Virology at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2004, studying recognition of apoptotic cells by macrophages. As a postdoctoral fellow she worked with Dr. Puneet Opal at Northwestern University, exploring the molecular pathology of Purkinje neurons in the Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type1 (SCA1). Research in her laboratory aims to increase our understanding of how glial cells modulate pathogenesis of SCA1 as well as of the etiology of cognitive and mood deficits in SCA1.