Quick Facts about Famnit 2012/13

Each year, the University of Primorska honours its best teachers and researchers with various awards and prizes. In 2012, the winners included the lecturers and researchers of UP FAMNIT who had demonstrated outstanding achievements in teaching and/or research in 2011. Award recipients in 2012 were:

• Assoc. Prof. Bojan Kuzma, PhD received the "Zlata plaketa Univerze na Primorskem / Golden Prize of the University of Primorska" award,
• Assist. Prof. Martin Milanič, PhD received an award from the Fund for Scientific Excellence of the University of Primorska,
• Assist. Prof. Branko Kavšek, PhD and Boštjan Frelih, MSc, received an award from the Fund for Educational Excellence of the University of Primorska.

View photos from the award ceremony...
 

In 2012, the Faculty hosted two national competitions for secondary school pupils. Having participated for the first time in organising national mathematical competitions for secondary school pupils in 2011, the Faculty enhanced its involvement in 2012 by hosting the 12th national biology competition (24 March 2012) and the 56th national mathematics competition (20 April 2012).
The mathematics competition saw the participation of 171 pupils (and their mentors), who had achieved top results at regional competitions. Organised by the Society of Mathematicians, Physicists and Astronomers of Slovenia (DMFA), the competition was held on the premises of Gimnazija Koper. Apart from UP FAMNIT, it was also hosted by UP PEF and Gimnazija Koper.
At the national competition in biology, organized by the Association for Technical Culture of Slovenia in cooperation with the Natural History Society of Slovenia, a total of 284 pupils competed for silver and golden Proteus Awards and for the titles of national champions. The competition was judged by a panel of assessors, which included students of the UP FAMNIT undergraduate Biodiversity programme.

Students of UP FAMNIT participating as assessors at the 12th national biology competition

Irman Abdić, graduate of the Computer Science Bachelor’s programme, received the Trimo Research Award for his final thesis entitled "Audio toolkit for displaying a spectrogram in real time in the open-source system Sphinx-4 ", which he completed under the supervision of our Faculty’s lecturer and researcher, Assoc. Prof. Janez Žibert, PhD.
Trimo, a successful Slovenian company, has been granting prizes for the best Bachelor’s and Master's theses for many years, with a focus on specialist papers and doctoral dissertations that are in some way related to the company’s activities. With their call for applications to the Trimo Research Awards, the company invites ambitious young researchers and their mentors, professors and scholars to compete, connecting them with companies which could make use of their knowledge. For further information about Trimo Research Awards, visit >

After the Trimo Awards ceremony: Irman Abdić (far right) with his mentor, Assoc. Prof. Janez Žibert, PhD, and Dean of UP FAMNIT, Assoc. Prof. Klavdija Kutnar, PhD (second right).

Despite being a young faculty, UP FAMNIT is heavily involved in international higher education. Each year, the faculty hosts many prominent international teachers and researchers. Likewise, the teachers and researchers of UP FAMNIT are also themselves active participants in international scientific symposiums, conferences and summer schools on their fields of expertise.
Among the 2012 events that deserve special mention are the visit of Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Prof. Sir Harold Kroto, PhD, and the visit of Prof. Patrick William Fowler, PhD from the Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield UK, who is also member of The Royal Society.
Prof . Kroto visited the University of Primorska on 28 August 2012 in the framework of the conference Computers and Scientific Discovery 6 ( CSD6 ), which took place from 21 – 25 August in Portorož .
Prof. Patrick William Fowler, PhD is a visiting professor participating in the teaching process at our postgraduate programmes of Mathematics (Master's and doctoral program in Mathematical Sciences). In his lectures he focuses on computationally intensive methods.
For further information on international visiting professors and researchers at FAMNIT UP and UP IAM, visit the Faculty’s website .

Dean of UP FAMNIT, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Klavdija Kutnar, presents Prof. Dr. Sir Harold Kroto with a “mathematical" clock from UP FAMNIT after a formal reception hosted by the Rector of the University of Primorska, Prof. Dr. Dragan Marušič, (Koper, 24 August 2012)

Prof. Patrick William Fowler, PhD from the Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield, UK, giving lectures to the postgraduate students of UP FAMNIT.

On 21 August 2012, the sixth international scientific conference of Computers in Scientific Discovery 6 (CSD6) began, which was held in Portorož. For the first time, the conference was organized by the Andrej Marušič Institute of the University of Primorska. Apart from UP FAMNIT, co-organizers of the conference were also UP FTŠ Turistica, IMFM and UL FMF .
The conference, which concluded on 25 August, was attended by 67 participants, 38 of whom came from abroad. We hosted some of the most prominent international researchers in the fields of chemistry, biology, computer science and mathematics, especially discrete mathematics. One of the key-note speakers was also the 1996 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry, Prof. Sir Harold Kroto, PhD.
On Friday, 24 August 2012, at his morning lecture entitled ‘Science, Lost in Translation?’, Prof. Sir Harold Kroto, PhD presented an outline of the development of science from the Enlightenment onwards and offered his own vision of how important it is at this historical moment to shake off all the shackles that impede the development of science.

Rector of the University of Primorska, Prof. Dragan Marušič, PhD, talking to Prof. Sir Harold Kroto, PhD.

This was already the third in the series of international workshops on ‘Symmetries of Graphs and Networks’ (SYGN III). Together with the International Doctoral Summer School of Discrete Mathematics, the conference was organised by UP FAMNIT and UP IAM in cooperation with the Centre for Discrete Mathematics of UL PEF and was held at Rogla from 24 – 30 June, 2012.
The conference was attended by 68 participants - 28 Slovenian and 40 international participants from about 20 countries. Among the participants there were also highly prominent international researchers and around 30 doctoral students.
In the conference part of the event (SYGN II), a total of 9 invited speakers from prestigious international institutions presented the newest research findings in the field of symmetries of graphs and networks.
For further information on the events, visit >

Group photo of the participants at the SYGN III international conference, held at Rogla

On Thursday, 13 September 2012, UP FAMNIT hosted an international workshop on its premises entitled Combinatorial Algorithms in Bioinformatics. It was organized by UP FAMNIT and UP IAM in collaboration with Genome Informatics, Faculty of Technology, Universität Bielefeld, Germany. The conference brought together 33 participants - 15 local and 18 international, some of whom presented the findings of their research on the use of combinatorial algorithms in bioinformatics and in related fields. On Friday, 14 September 2012, the participants had the opportunity for discussion and research.
For further information, visit >

Group photo of the participants of the International Scientific Workshop on Combinatorial Algorithms in Bioinformatics, taken in Koper

The first year of the GReGAS project , the first European mathematical project coordinated from Slovenia. The collaborative research project GReGAS ( Geometric representations and symmetries of graphs, maps and other discrete structures and applications in science) is comprised of a total of 16 projects. The main objective of the project is to develop a geometric representation and symmetry of graphs, maps and other discrete structures and applications in science.
The supporting agency of the project is UP IAM. The project is coordinated by Prof. Tomaž Pisanski, PhD and Prof. Dragan Marušič, PhD and is conducted in the context of the Eurocordes / Eurogiga programme. It includes not only partners from Croatia, Germany, Slovakia, and Turkey, but also associated partners, high-profile mathematicians from Austria, Israel, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States.
The presentation of the project, which took place in November 2011, was also attended by a representative of the European Science Foundation (ESF) Aigars Ekers, PhD.