Ivana finished her graduate and undergraduate programs in psychology at University of Zagreb, where she graduated as second best in the generation. She defended her master’s thesis in 2014 titled “Integration of approaches as a new framework for research on stress vulnerability and resilience: Genetic, epigenetic and neural mechanisms of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity”.

In 2015 she was funded by Erasmus+ to do a research internship in molecular biology at University of Exeter, where she got her first research experience and gained skills in gene expression and epigenetics. A few months later, she started a joint PhD program at Coventry University and Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour where she is now combining psychology with molecular biology while also getting trained in neuroscience.