Renata graduated from the University of Belgrade, specialising in Viticulture and Horticulture. She attained her PhD in Viticulture and Oenology at the University of Adelaide in 2004. Since then, she has been involved in many research projects and gained expertise in viticulture, winemaking, wine chemistry, sensory science and consumer studies. One of her previous research projects focused on the effect of bush fire smoke on vine physiology, grape and wine quality and wine sensory properties. She also worked in the area of consumer studies and investigated the effect of context and wine composition on wine consumers’ emotions, perception of quality, hedonic liking and purchase intentions. She has developed the Wine Neophobia Scale to measure consumers' willingness to buy unfamiliar wine and the emotional lexicon for Australian wine consumers. In 2015, Renata joined the ARC TC-IWP as a senior postdoctoral research fellow. She coordinated research and collaboration between CSU, UA and ARC TC-IWP and translated research outputs from all TC-IWP projects into industry-ready applications. Since 2020, Renata's research focus has again been on the smoke taint and the use of different materials, viticultural and winemaking techniques to mitigate the effect of smoke on grape and wine quality.