Prof. Ph.D. Marina Ilakovac Kveder spent her entire working life, since 1982, at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) in Zagreb, the last 10 years as a permanent scientific advisor. Since 2014, she has been the head of the Laboratory for Magnetic Resonances in the Division of Physical Chemistry (DPC). She was a full professor at the Faculty of Science (PMF) of the University of Zagreb and at the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek, where she taught the courses Biomembranes, Spin Labelling in Biophysics, Fundamentals of Magnetic Resonance Methods and Biomembranes: Interaction of Lipids and Proteins.

She graduated in physics from the Faculty of Science at the University of Zagreb in 1981, where she obtained a master's degree in 1985 and a PhD in 1988. She received her scientific training at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia 1986-1988, and as a postdoctoral Humboldt Fellow at the Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany 1992-1994.

Throughout her scientific career, she has been involved in magnetic resonance spectroscopy, primarily electron paramagnetic/spin resonance (EPR or ESR), but also NMR and MRI, pursuing a wide range of scientific interests, from medical physics and biophysics to solid-state physics, from lipoproteins and spin-labeled tissues to the study of the dynamics of disordered systems by pulsed EPR spectroscopy and molecular spin qubits. She has co-authored 63 articles (Scopus) in prestigious scientific journals such as Physical review B, Journal of non-crystalline solids, Journal of chemical physics, Chemical physics letters, Applied physics letters and this year Chemical science.

She successfully led a project of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Group Linkage Programme ( 2011-2015) and two research projects of the Croatian Science Foundation (2014-2018, 2018-2023), was coordinator of the EU AVACS project for the RBI (2020-2022) and owner of several commercial collaborations with Pliva, Xelija, etc. Through her selfless efforts and thanks to her projects and collaborations, she managed to acquire a new capital instrument of the Republic of Croatia in 2021, the Bruker EMX EPR spectrometer.

Prof. Ph.D. Marina Ilakovac Kveder successfully mentored young collaborators and assistants and contributed through her work in several scientific and professional bodies: as president of the Ethics Committee of the RBI, Ombudsman of the DPC, member of the Commission for Monitoring the Quality of Molecular Bioscience Studies, member of the University Council for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies (PhD students) at the University of Osijek, member of the Board of Directors of the Croatian Humboldt Club, member of the Board of Directors and MC for Croatia in several COST Actions, etc.

Marina was extremely dedicated to her work, responsible, and attentive to her colleagues and students. She was an exceptional person, courageous, decisive in crucial moments, self-sacrificing, persistent, communicative, selfless, kind, and a sincere friend to anyone who needed her scientific and/or life experience, "the good spirit of the Old Ruđer". We will sorely miss her.

On behalf of the Laboratory for Magnetic Resonances

Dijana Žilić