SASA Foreign Member Vesna Garović’s Inaugural Lecture
’The Role of Senescence in the Pathophysiology of Preeclampsia’

Vesna Garović, SASA foreign member, will deliver her inaugural lecture titled  ’The Role of Senescence in the Pathophysiology of Preeclampsia’ on Friday, 13 June, at noon, at the SASA Grand Hall.

Professor Vesna Garović, MD, is one of the leading world experts in internal medicine and nephrology, focusing on clinical and research interests in the fields of hypertension and renal diseases during pregnancy. She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Belgrade, where she also obtained her master’s and doctoral degrees. In 1988, she completed her residency in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. The following year, she received a prestigious scholarship from the Royal Victoria Hospital for master’s studies in medical genetics at McGill University in Montreal. She also completed an internal medicine residency and a nephrology fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Dr Vesna Garović has been employed at the prestigious Mayo Clinic since 1999. She is a full professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science in Minnesota and a visiting professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade. At this clinic, she serves as the head of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, vice-chairperson for research in the Department of Internal Medicine; director of the Mayo Clinic Centre for Clinical and Translational Science as well as dean for Clinical and Translational Science across the entire Mayo Clinic system—spanning Minnesota, Florida, and Arizona. She has been named Professor of Clinical Medicine, one of the highest honours bestowed by the Mayo Clinic.

Dr Garović has authored 227 peer-reviewed publications, holds an h-index of 55, and has been cited over 9,475 times. Her clinical and research interests in hypertension—particularly hypertensive disorders of pregnancy—encompass diagnosis and treatment, epidemiology of cardiovascular and renal complications, and molecular mechanisms of disease, with a special focus on epigenetics and senescence.

She is a member of the Research Division on Pregnancy and Neonatology of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Hypertension and Kidney Disease in Cardiovascular Disease Science Committee of the American Heart Association. Dr Garović is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pregnancy Hypertension, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Centre for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Preeclampsia Foundation. Additionally, she is a founding member of the Royal Medical Council of Serbia.

Dr Garović has received numerous honours and awards, including the Mayo Clinic Lecturer of the Year Award (2012), the Mayo Clinic Award for Outstanding Contribution as a Clinical Medicine Doctor (2018), the Marvin Moser Clinical Hypertension Award from the AHA Council on Hypertension (2022), the American Society of Nephrology Barbara Murphy Life Achievement Award (2024), and the Corcoran Award from the American Heart Association and the Council on Hypertension (2024).