Born in Montenegro in 1979, Marijana moved to Italy in 1998 to study Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Trieste, where she graduated in 2003. She's been at SISSA since 2005, working as a Lab Manager on various international and Italian funded projects (McDonnell Grant, HFSP, FIRB, PSYSCOPE XL, FP7 CALACEI, ERC PASCAL).

Since December 2016, she's the Admin Manager for the ERC projects STATLEARN (awarded to Davide) and BiT (awarded to Domenica Bueti).