What is your name, affiliation, academic position, and job title?
My name is Dr. Vesna Borka Jovanović, I am affiliated with the Department of Theoretical Physics and Condensed Matter Physics (020) in the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences in the National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade as a Research Associate.
What is your journey? (Where did you live, learn and work?)
I was born in Pančevo, Serbia, I obtained in 2002 a B.Sc. in Astrophysics, in 2005 an M.Sc. in Astrophysics, in 2009 a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, all at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and in 2010 a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Banja Luka, Boznia and Herzegovina. I was a teacher of physics, mathematics, and informatics in elementary schools between 2003 and 2005, and since 2010 I am a researcher at the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade, Serbia.
What is your field of research and/or what project are you involved in?
My research interests are radioastronomy, mass spectra of elementary particles, gravitation and cosmology, and numerical experiments.
What are your research plans?
Besides many interesting researche (regarding astroparticle physics and cosmology), my research plan includes Modified Gravity theories, as well as the comparison of the theoretical results with astronomical data.
How does CosmoVerse fit within those plans?
As the main goal of COST action CA21136 is connecting observational cosmology with fundamental physics using novel approaches to data analysis, it fits very well to my research plan.
What are the most exciting open questions in your research area?
There are many open questions, for instance let us here mention:
- the existence of tetraquarks (in my opinion, there are some experimentally confirmed states with the tetraquark components in their wave functions),
- non-existence of dark matter (in my opinion, the modified theories of gravity can explain many observations),
- impossibility of standard LambdaCDM cosmological model to address the Hubble tension.
What advances or new results are you excited about or looking forward to?
I am looking forward for the new astronomical observations, which are planned to be (after some time) publicly available.
What is your view on cosmic tensions? How does your work connect with this open question in the community?
I am studying the possible solutions to the cosmological tensions by challenging the standard LambdaCDM cosmological model, based on Einstein’s General Relativity, by alternative cosmologies, based on different Modified Gravity theories.
What is the biggest obstacle that is slowing down your research field right now?
The biggest obstacle that is slowing down my research is the lack of my professional advancement due to the presence of corruption in our Ministry of Science, Science Fund, and the management of my institute.
What role do you think a community network like CosmoVerse can play in developing theoretical astroparticle physics and cosmology?
This community network can connect researchers through their common projects.
Your favourite scientist and/or science fiction film?
My favourite science fiction film is The Running Man (1987).
If you were not a scientist, what do you think you would be doing?
If I were not a scientist, I would be a painter.
What question would you have liked us to ask you, and what would you have answered?
The question would be: What is the main characteristic of your scientific papers?
The answer would be: I always try to write the papers in that way the readers could learn something new from there (regarding the theory, method, way of calculation, …) with a lot of representative figures.