Anikó Mentes

research fellow

PhD (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2020)

Biography

Anikó Mentes received her MSc degree in Biology from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in 2014. She completed her doctoral studies at the ELTE Doctoral School of Biology, conducting research in microbiology, and obtained her PhD in 2020. Her doctoral dissertation ( Comparative microbiological analysis of shallow lakes dominated by decaying plant material ) focused on microbial communities inhabiting unique shallow lakes of the Carpathian Basin. Her work combined molecular biology, cultivation-based, taxonomic, and bioinformatics methods.

Following her doctoral research, she joined the Protein Structure Research Group at the Institute of Enzymology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, where she worked on the bioinformatics analysis of intrinsically disordered proteins and their interactions.

She is currently a research fellow at the Department of Physics of Complex Systems at ELTE and a member of the CSABAI • BIO Research Group . Her research focuses on the bioinformatics analysis of large biological datasets, pathogen genomics, molecular diagnostics, and the development and application of scientific databases. Her work has included the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomic variation, mutations affecting diagnostic primer-binding regions, and the structural consequences of viral mutations. She played a key role in the development of ViralPrimer , a web-based platform for monitoring the performance of diagnostic primers against evolving viral genomes.

Her current interests also include the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in science, particularly the evaluation of research-focused AI tools and their integration into bioinformatics, data analysis, literature research, and reproducible scientific workflows.

In recent years, her research has expanded through interdisciplinary collaborations. Together with researchers at the University of Miskolc, she contributes to data-driven studies of polyurethane foam ageing, combustion behaviour and the emission of environmentally relevant pollutants.

Teaching

She contributes to the Data Exploration and Visualization and Data Models and Databases in Science courses at the ELTE Faculty of Science. Her teaching topics include the fundamentals of SQL and relational databases, hands-on analysis of biological databases, and AI-assisted data exploration.

Links to associated scientific database profiles:

• Publications in MTMT
• Publications in ORCID
• Publications in Google Scholar
• Profile at doktori.hu
• Member of the public body of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences HAS
• Member of the Hungarian Society for Bioinformatics MABIT

Selected publications of recent years:

1. Mentes, D., Mentes, A., Farkas, L., Salamon, D., Jordán Csábrádiné, A., Muránszky, G., Tang, X., Fiser, B., Viskolcz, B., & Póliska, C. (2026). Impact of inorganic additives and ageing on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission from polyurethane foam combustion.* Journal of Hazardous Materials, 506, 141576.
2. Mentes, D., Söjtöry, B., Mentes, A., Farkas, L., Veréb, Z., Fejes, Z., Garami, A., Fiser, B., Viskolcz, B., & Póliska, C. (2025). Effect of inorganic substances and ageing on air pollutant concentrations from polyurethane foam combustion.* Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, 13(5), 118183.
3. Deutsch, N., Dosztányi, Z., Csabai, I., Medgyes-Horváth, A., Pipek, O. A., Stéger, J., Papp, K., Visontai, D., Erdős, G., & Mentes, A. (2024). ViralPrimer: a web server to monitor viral nucleic acid amplification tests’ primer efficiency during pandemics, with emphasis on SARS-CoV-2 and Mpox.* Bioinformatics, 40(11), btae657.
4. Kilim, O., Mentes, A., Pál, B., Csabai, I., & Gellért, Á. (2023). SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain deep mutational AlphaFold2 structures. Scientific Data, 10(1), 134.
5. Mentes, A., Papp, K., Visontai, D., Stéger, J., Csabai, I., Medgyes-Horváth, A., & Pipek, O. A. (2022). Identification of mutations in SARS-CoV-2 PCR primer regions. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 18651.
6. Magyar, C., Mentes, A., Cserző, M., & Simon, I. (2021). Origin of Increased Solvent Accessibility of Peptide Bonds in Mutual Synergetic Folding Proteins. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 22(24), 13404.