Mina gained her first degrees in math and computer science at the University of Belgrade in her native country of Serbia. She then moved to EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland to undertake her PhD, where she worked on the development of computational tools for the design and fabrication of complex, smart materials, with applications ranging from medical implants to architecture and space engineering. Her work focused on abstracting material and fabrication constraints into suitable, geometric graphical representations.
As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Mina worked at MIT to incorporate machine learning techniques into her digital fabrication work. She now continues her work at MIT drawing on data-driven methods to create designs in digital fabrication not possible before. As such, she aims to generate new algorithms and interactive tools for the creation of 3D shapes and meta-materials with complex physical behaviors.
Mina wants to move her research into robotics and bioengineering where she sees the potential for custom implants, prosthetics, or soft robot designs, that can be based on advances in digital fabrication.