Which advice would you give to a young female scientist?
Do not ever loose hope. I never thought it would be easy, the amount of work to be done seemed always to grow, and once I got the family the pace slowed down.
But it is manageable, you get better organised and more efficient.
Did or do you experience hurdles in your career as female researcher?
Once or twice I got some nasty remarks right into my face, but I never had any real problems being a wife and a mother.
Did or do you identify special opportunities for female researchers?
I could not find any special opportunities for female researchers that were waiting for me to raise my hand and say „Here I am!“ Rather there are opportunities that are „built-in“ women that make them organise their work, plan and creatively explore new connections between fields, something we do every day while exploring, teaching, playing, taking care of others and enjoying free time.
Do you think that a career in research is easily brought into accordance with your family?
Yes, because in my Institute (Rudjer Bošković Institute, Zagreb) we have opportunity of moving working hours (8,5 hours per day). We can start at 9:30 and end at 18:00, of start at 8:00 and finish at 16:30. My husbands helps me a lot and has a lot of understanding for me. Children (aged 19, daughter, and a son – 13,5) yawn a lot when I talk about my work, but I am persistant.
What is your current position?
I am senior research associate at the Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia.
Do you have further plans?
My plans are to apply Raman spectroscopy to study of energy flow in plant organisms. If you read Korean journals, you can find they have already started to explore the attenuation of laser light flowing through human acupuncture meridians. I think the monitoring of energy flow in plants could be done using 785 nm laser light and Raman spectroscopy. My interest is to find if there are „energy highways“, whether there are certain enzimes which work in cascade allowing the flow.
Is there something you really want and try hard to achieve?
Yes, I want to find out about meridians in humans. Although accepted in the East, in the West they are considered as misnomer, a problem in translation. Physiologists have always tried to pin them down to some anatomical feature, but there is none. There are some published articles on search for meridians in corpses. None were found. It seems that “acupuncture meridian” is a functional property of a living organism. Joie P. Jones did ultrasound measurements on human meridians.
Is there something else you’d like to share with us?
I think life is much more complex than we think. One should never succumb to difficulties, because they are here to be overcome.
Ms. Vlasta Mohaček Grošev was born on 11.12.1963 and has a PhD in physics.