The Ivan Đaja Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of Physiology, carried out at institutes and universities in Serbia, and defended during 2019/2020 was presented to Dr. Marija Jakovljević, from the Department of Neurobiology at IBISS, for his thesis entitled "The role of purinergic signaling in neuroinflammation and demyelination – implications for multiple sclerosis". The PhD thesis was performed at the Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković" - National Institute of Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade, under the supervision of Dr. Irena Lavrnja and Dr. Danijela Laketa.

On December 7th, 2020, the 2nd Conference of Pan-Balkan Alliance of Natural Products and Drug Discovery Associations (PANDA) and Scientific Webinar on Combating COVID-19 were held in Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), Chinese Academy of Sciences. On the online conference, which was also broadcasted online, attended a great number of professors and scientist from 13 countries (China, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Portugal and Turkey).