Dijana Dominis Prester is a professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of Rijeka, Department of physics, where she is lecturing and mentoring students at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral studies. Born in Rijeka (Croatia) in 1970 where she attended school, she was active as amateur astronomer since young age, and at the age of 17 left Rijeka for Minneapolis (U.S.A.) where she graduated from high school. She studied during the 4-year war at the University of Zagreb master studies of physics, and later defended her PhD thesis in astrophysics at the University of Potsdam in Germany, on detecting planets outside of our Solar System. She spent over 8 years abroad working at various observatories and institutions (in Germany, Austria, Japan, Spain, Australia, Chile...), and is currently active in international experiments MAGIC and CTA. She is a coauthor of over 180 peer-rewieved scientific publications (among them 4 in Nature and 2 in Science), and was in 2009 rewarded the prize "Woman of the year" for achievements in research and public outreach of science.
She is married, and in her free time sewing and designing clothes, writing poetry, and relaxing through dancing, yoga and swimming.