Vanja Nagy obtained her PhD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (MSSM), USA and received postdoctoral training in the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences (MedILS), Croatia, and Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, (IMBA), Austria. During her PhD, she studied basic molecular neuroscience and described a novel role for extracellular proteolysis supporting structural and functional synaptic remodelling underlining learning and memory.

During her postdoctoral fellowships she focused on preclinical phenotyping of mouse models and molecular pathophysiology of genetic disorders affecting basic functions of the nervous system. In 2016, she co-authored a successful application for the establishment of the first institute dedicated to the study of rare and undiagnosed diseases in Austria, The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases (LBI-RUD).

There, she established her independent research group focusing on rare neurodevelopmental disorders. At this time, she was also appointed as Adjunct PI at CeMM Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2016-2023). Her group was located at the Neurology Department of the Medical University of Vienna (MUW) from 2019-2023.

Following two rewarding decades in basic academic research, in 2023 Vanja closed her resarch group and joined the biotech ecosystem. She continues to support the needs of critically ill patients by focusing on accelerating novel therapeutic, imaging and biomarker development for unmed medical needs.