Mirta has been co-leader of the research group Collective Minds at the Complexity Science Hub, together with Henrik Olsson, since 2023.

She studies how simple cognitive mechanisms interact with social and physical environments to produce seemingly complex social phenomena. Her projects focus on developing empirically grounded computational models of social judgments, social learning, collective problem solving, and opinion dynamics. She is also interested in how people understand and cope with uncertainty and complexity inherent in many everyday decisions.

After obtaining a PhD in Psychology from the University of Zagreb, and an MSc from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, Universities of Maryland and Michigan, she was a postdoc and then a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She has been at the Santa Fe Institute since 2015 and at the Complexity Science Hub since 2023.

She published numerous articles in psychological and interdisciplinary journals on topics ranging from theories of social cognition to studies of applied problems such as hate speech and science communication.

Mirta is also Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, External Faculty at the Vermont Complex Systems Center, UVM as well as an Associate Researcher at the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at University of Potsdam.