Sandra Mihaljevic, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Sandra Mihaljevic, PhD, MSc, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Jha Laboratory within the Department of Translational Neuroscience at Barrow Neurological Institute.

Dr. Mihaljevic’s expertise is in the study of brain barriers, with her doctoral research work focused on the role of the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BSCFB) in tau-induced neurodegeneration. She has developed an in vitro barrier model for tau transport and immune cell trafficking studies. Additionally, she has studied BCSFB changes at the structural and ultrastructural levels using electron microscopy, and implemented magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the evaluation of disease progression for mouse models of tauopathy.

Dr. Mihaljevic earned her doctorate degree from the Institute of Neuroimmunology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovakia and a master’s degree in experimental biology from the University of Zagreb in Croatia. While working toward her PhD, she completed a research internship at the Theodor Kocher Institute of the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Dr. Mihaljevic’s current research interests include acute brain injury conditions, particularly single-cell profiling of immunological responses in patients with these conditions. She also investigates biomarkers for improving diagnostic accuracy and for supporting the development of individualized therapeutic approaches.