Dora was born in a small town in eastern Croatia but moved to the capital Zagreb where she obtained her BSc and MSc in Molecular Biology. For her Master's thesis project, she joined Dr. Peter Tessarz’s lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, where she studied the regulation of promoter-proximal RNA Pol II pausing in the ageing mouse liver. There, she developed an interest in the regulation of the initial stages of transcription and is happy to have the opportunity to continue studying the same process for her PhD. This time, during the exciting period of zygotic genome activation!

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She is also excited about science outreach targeted at high school students. As a member of the Society for Out-of-Frame Education, she devotes a lot of her spare time to organizing an international scientific camp for high school students in her home country, the Summer School of Science - S3/S3++. When not focused on science-related activities, Dora enjoys getting lost in foreign countries and watching movies.