After graduating from the Molecular Biology program at the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia, the Institute for Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering accepted Dr. Savkovic into their graduate program. Soon after finishing her MS thesis, she accepted an invitation to be part of a team working on the Genome Project at the Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. Although this project was exciting, her desire to continue with academic science transpired after meeting Dr. Gail Hecht at the University of Illinois in Chicago. After finishing her Ph.D., through which she sought to understand the mechanism of intestinal inflammation, and with the support of her mentor, Dr. Savkovic's post-graduate projects received Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America Fellowship and Career Development Awards. While her interests have expanded towards understanding how inflammation fosters tumor growth, which is often seen among patients with ulcerative colitis, she was searching for an institution with a strong cancer program. As a result, she landed her first independent position at the Research Institution of Evanston-Northwestern Healthsystem, which was part of Northwestern University and then later became associated with the University of Chicago. Her main research focus at the time was to study the role of the transcription factor FOXO3 in inflammation-mediated tumor growth, with a specific focus on the colonic epithelium and colon cancer. These projects were awarded the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America Senior Investigator Award and an NIH R01 grant. In 2013, Dr. Savkovic joined Tulane University and became a member of the Cancer Center in the hopes of further understanding the regulation of FOXO3-dependent metabolic pathways that provide fuel energy to support inflammation and tumor growth.
