Quick facts about Famnit 2017/18

On Thursday, 23 November 2017, our professor and researcher Assoc. Prof. Martin Milanič, PhD received the Zois Certificate of Recognition for important achievements in scientific research work in the field of discrete mathematics.
Zois Awards and Recognitions are the most prestigious awards for exceptional achievements in scientific research and development activities, awarded to researchers who are active in Slovenia.

Also in 2017, we were successful in obtaining founds for projects in the frame of different international programmes. The Department of Applied Natural Sciences successfully acquired the project SUSGRAPE  "Promoting sustainable wine-growing through ICT in the cross-border area of IT-SLO", as a partner institution, in the frame of Interreg Program V-A Italy-Slovenia 2014-2020.
The Department of Biodiversity, together with partners from Slovenia and Croatia, successfully acquired the project under the Interreg Program V-A Slovenia-Croatia, entitled LIKE - Living on the Karst Edge. Additionally, together with UP IAM, we also acquired five new research projects on the scientific research base, which are co-financed by Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS).

Our researchers also continue to work on bigger international projects, which have been financed from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The projects InnoRenew CoE and Starbios2 have received founds by the program Horizon 2020, while the project Life Euroturtles is funded by the programme Life.

In order to achieve the vision of the project InnoRenew CoE, in February 2017 the Research Institute InnoRenew CoE was established. Its goal remains to become a leading institution in the field of research of renewable materials and sustainable construction, aiming to introduce the results to industrial everyday practice. The activities of the Institute, founded by the University of Primorska, the German Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research WKI, the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, focus on two technologies: wood modification and restorative environmental and ergonomic design (REED).
The emphasis of the research work is on developing innovations for the industry, providing support to companies in implementing research and development innovations and establishing connections with policymakers in order to encourage and support companies and researches in the forestry sector.
With this, InnoRenew CoE is becoming an example of excellence in international researches, to support the economy and raise awareness and to involve the public in its activities (more on www.innorenew.eu).

In 2017 we also managed and carried out one infrastructure programme ARRS (Slovenian Research Agency), 2 research programmes ARRS, 8 fundamental research projects ARRS, 3 applicative research projects ARRS, 11 bilateral projects in the frame of scientific research cooperation ARRS (with institutions from USA, Russian Federation, Japan, Montenegro and Austria), 3 traineeships of young researcher ARRS, 2 programmes of cooperation Interreg (between Slovenia-Italy and Slovenia-Croatia), 1 project Life and 1 project Horizon 2020, which are co-financed by European Commision (more about programmes and projects).

UP FAMNIT has a wide network of connections and cooperations with prestigious universities and research institutes from all over the world. Several of them are also highly ranged in Shanghai’s Academic Ranking of World Universities 2017. At UP FAMNIT foreign experts are hosted in the frame of a different projects or individual arrangements. One of the current projects is the GUEST UP project - Hosting foreign experts and professors at the University of Primorska.
In the last year the number of incoming experts increased to 75.
Similar success can be seen in mobilities of our teachers and researchers: in the last 12 months more than 100 research visits were performed at foreign institutions.

The internationality of UP FAMNIT is also shown in the increasing number of students from abroad, who decided to study at UP FAMNIT. This academic year (2017/2018) we welcomed 76 new freshmen who are not Slovenian sitizens. Students from abroad represent almost 40% of all FAMNIT freshmen. At UP FAMNIT is currently studying 132 foreign students (24,4% of all students), from 20 different countries. In addition, there are 19 more students who came to Koper through different mobility programmes.

In June 2017, a diverse group of 20 international students participated to a summer school The Forest Sector’s Contribution to Sustainability of the Built Environment in Alpine Europe, which was organized jointly with UP FAMNIT and Oregon State University, College of Forestry (USA). Students came from different parts of the world: Finland, Indonesia, China, Sweden, Ukraine, United States of America and Slovenia.

Scientists from the Department of Synthetic Biology and Immunology at the National Institute of Chemistry, among which can be found also our Prof. Tomaž Pisanski, PhD, have developed a new type of material, protein origami, which can be self-synthesized in cells, and it is also able to form nanometer cages by itself. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology, which is considered to be the most prominent scientific journal in the field of biotechnology in the world.

Tilen Genov from the Department of Biodiversity was head of the research group, which has shown that individual dolphins can be distinguished by their face and thus invented a new dolphin identification method. He presented his findings together with an international team of scientists in a study, published in the international Marine Mammal Science magazine, a central scientific journal for the science of marine mammals.

In October 2017, a special edition of the Discrete Applied Mathematics magazine was published. This was the fruitful result of the international conference AGTAC - Algorithmic Graph Theory on the Adriatic Coast. The magazine offers a selection of 21 scientific articles. Among them, we can find the contribution of Prof. Andrej Brodnik, PhD (UP and UL) and Marko Grgurovič (UP) on the shortest paths in the graphs entitled: Solving all-pairs shortest path by single-source computations: Theory and practice.

Assist. Prof. Iztok Savnik, PhD from the Department of Information Science and Technologies, in collaboration with Yahoo Japan Research, produced a patent entitled Search method and device for RDF data.
The content of the patent is a method and protocol for conducting queries in a distributed database of triples, which allow a high level of parallelism on the basis of distributed and pipelined parallelism. The method and the protocol are implemented in the data-driven system for carrying out big3store queries.

In March 2017, the University of Primorska held the Gala Academy to award successful professors, researchers and students. Awarded colleagues of UP FAMNIT were:

• Assist. Prof. Klen Čopič Pucihar, PhD, who received the award for young professors for the excellence and top achievements in the field of scientific and pedagogical work,

• Assoc. prof. dr. Andreja Kutnar, PhD, who received the Scientific Excellence Award of the University of Primorska in the field of science and technology,

• Vladan Jovičić, who received the »Srečko Kosovel Award« which is given to successful students of the University of Primorska.

At the 31st International Maritime Mammal Conference in Denmark, Tilen Genov from the Department of Biodiversity received the European Association of Whales and Dolphins Award for the best short lecture, entitled "Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and free-ranging common bottlenose dolphins from the northern Adriatic Sea, in relation to demographic parameters".

Our PhD student and assistant Marko Grgurovič set a new record with a group of international developers on the platform for mass financing Kickstarter: he presented a computer game Mordhau, which in one day already reached the set sum - USD 80 000. The number of supporters at the end of the campaign was 4,375, who supported the project with USD 298,608.
Mordhau is a computer game where up to 64 players can participate. It is currently in its final stage of production. More at: https://mordhau.com/.

In November, the winners of the 11th competition for the best business idea of Primorska "Podjetna Primorska 2017" were announced. Also this year, students of our faculty won the first place in the category Rector's Prize with the project Pan-Map, which offers, through the application on the smartphone and a photo of the map, a number of additional contents of the visiting places. The project is the result of teamwork of our Assist. Prof. Klen Čopič Pucihar, PhD, Bojan and Peter Simončič, and our master degree student of Computer Science Leo Gombač.

From March to May, FAMNIT's students of study programme Mathematics participated in three rounds of the international internet competition »Open International Internet-Olympiads for Higher Education Students«. Among 6,413 participants from 175 universities, Arber Avdullahu (1st year of Mathematics) took an excellent 4th place and thus received a silver award, while Marko Palangetić (1st year of Mathematical Sciences) received a bronze award.

At the national competition of students in the field of mathematics for Jurij Vega's awards, the highest number of points was collected by our student of Mathematics at UP FAMNIT Roman Solodukhin. With the final result, he won both the gold award and also the first prize of this year's competition.

Also this year, our students participated at the oldest mathematics competition for students within EU: the Vojtěch Jarník International Mathematical Competition held in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Among 132 students from 36 universities, Famnit was represented by Arbër Avdullahu, Daniil Baldouski, Roman Solodukhin and Anes Valentić. Avdullahu, Baldouski and Solodukhin received the certificate of a successful participant. Solodukhin also, with 20 points scored, achieved the best ranking of Famnit's students in the second category so far.

At the end of April, the University development center and university incubator of Primorska organized the second NASA Space Apps Challenge, the world's largest hexaton about earth and space. 25,000 participants in 69 countries on 187 locations were solving one of the five challenges prepared by NASA. Among 19 participants from Slovenia, the first award went to the project Space Door, which was created by our student Oliver Glavina, a student of the Master's Program Computer Science.

In August, Filip Božić, Daniil Baldouski, and Arbër Avdulah attended the 24th International Mathematics Competition for University Students 2017, held in Bulgaria. Students of the first year of Mathematics did a great job in presenting UP FAMNIT, since Avdulah received also the honor award.

In October 2017 UP FAMNIT hosted the final round of the University Programming Marathon (UPM) 2017, which was organized by ACM Slovenija. Teams from all over Slovenia competed for the title of champion of UPM as well as for the titles of champions of all three Slovenian public universities.
Out of a total of 168 competitors, 55 best competitors fought in Koper for the first place. Champions of the University of Primorska were Mikita Akulich, Daniil Baldovski and Anton Uramer.

15 UP FAMNIT students participated at Primatijada competition, which took place between 28 April and 3 May 2017 in Montenegro. In the IT contest, 1st place was won by Leo Gombač, 2nd place went to Valentin Sojar and Patrik Kocjančič, while Peter Kozlovič was third. In the category Biology in Ecology, Nina Omejc won the second place.
Famnit's team competed also in various sports disciplines, with the most successful Nina Omejc and Lučka Markič, who won the 3rd place in women's table tennis.

Our students were successful also in the sports field. Within the sports league of the University of Primorska, they competed in three categories: basketball, volleyball, and futsal.
In 2017 they won the 1st place in basketball, while the 2nd place was awarded to the volleyball and futsal team.

In the year 2017, we continued with the organization of international scientific conferences, meetings, and summer schools in the fields of mathematics, computer science, psychology, health care and sustainable construction. This were:

• PhD Summer School in Algebraic Graph Theory,
• ECCO – European Chapter on Combinatorial Optimization,
• Triple I 2016: Intuition, Imagination and Innovation in Suicidology,
• LAW’17: 8^th Linear Algebra Workshop,
• 2017 PhD Summer School in Discrete Mathematics,
• International Summer School ’The Forest Sector’s Contribution to Sustainability of the Built Environment in Alpine Europe’.
• 5^th Annual Mississippi Discrete Math Workshop,
• Workshop on Discrete and Computational Biomathematics and Mathematical Chemistry.

On Friday, 9th June, the 7th Graduation Ceremony of UP FAMNIT took place at the Koper Theater. Diplomas were awarded to 81 undergraduate and 16 graduate students. In addition, 10 students received rewards of the Faculty for their achievements active involvement in the Faculty life.

On 19 October new doctors of science were promoted at the Universiy of Primorska. Among them were also Tatjana Romina Hartinger and Samir Hodžić, who both completed their doctoral studies in Mathematics.

Also in 2017 we organized or participated in several events, whose common goal was the popularization of science. Round tables, seminars and other activities for different audiences were organized. Also our students were active in organizing different activities, especially the members of the Association of Biopsychology Students and the Association of Conservation Biologists BIODIVA. Students and others were offered courses in the field of computer science, biology, agriculture and other meetings with experts from the different fields of natural science.

Within the framework of the ninth cycle of popular lectures Famnit Excursions into the Mathematical Universe on the topics of mathematics and its role in the modern world, the participants listened to different lectures, given by:

• Prof. Andrej Bauer, PhD (on the topic that the images are worth a thousand words),
• Prof. Tomaž Pisanski, PhD (on the topic of the history of discrete geometry),
• Assist. Prof. Jernej Vičič, PhD (on the topic of mathematical models used in statistical machine translation),
• Prof. Janko Gravner, PhD (on the topic of order and disorder), 
• Assoc. Prof. Mihael Perman, PhD (on the topic of paradoxes in probability), and
• Assist. Nino Bašić, PhD (on the topic of invisible polieder);

In the first months of the year, we successfully organized three mathematical days. The first one was on the 25 January, when 120 students from Koper Gymnasium visited the Faculty. This was the first time, that we organized a mathematical day for secondary school studentpupils. The other two were on 31 March (with 56 pupils from 4 Elementary Schools) and on 14 April (with 63 pupils from two Elementary Schools).

On Saturday, 8 April 2017, a meeting of high school teachers of biology took place at University campus Livade in Izola. The lecturers and assistants from the Department of Biodiversity presented some modern contents in the fields of genetics, epigenetics and protein structure that can be included in their work.

At the end of April, we promoted mathematics also abroad. At the initiative of three of our students, we organized an international mathematical competition in Gjakova, Kosovo, which was attended by 43 pupils. The Gjakova Mathematics Competition 2017 was presented also by the local media, which shows the importance of such international cooperation between the University of Primorska and the cities which our students come from.

At the beginning of summer, the Biological Research Camp in Slovenian Istria was successfully organized for the second year in a row. The camp was organized by the Department of Biodiversity and the Slovenian Technical Culture Association. 13 high school pupils from all over Slovenia have been discovering for four days the diversity of flora and fauna and their adaptation to life in the Mediterranean. At the same time, our researchers in Campus Livade took care of the preparation of Slovenian participants at 28th International Biological Olympiad, which took place at the end of July in the UK.

 

At the end of August, we successfully organized the 7th Famnit Summer Camp Math is cool, which was this year intended exclusively for secondary school students. A total of 29 young people attended the five-day educational, research and, ultimately, social events between 20 and 25 August 2017: 18 were from different parts of Slovenia, 10 from Bosnia and Herzegovina and 1 from Serbia.

An important event involving teachers, researchers and faculty students was the European Researchers’ Night, which took place in the framework of the all-Slovenian project Science for Life. On Friday, 29 September 2017, participants at various locations in Koper and Izola, including the laboratories of the University Campus Livade, participated in interesting experiments, workshops, tours and socializing with researchers in the festival atmosphere.

The academic year ended with the 7th Research Days in Mathematics, which we traditionally organize in cooperation with the Society of Mathematicians, Physicists and Astronomers of Slovenia and University of Primorska Faculty of Education. On the basis of successful ranking at the national competition in mathematics or at international competitions, the faculty invited 29 pupils from various secondary schools. Young mathematic enthusiasts attended lectures in selected chapters in mathematics, intended for preparation for the International Mathematical Olympiad and other mathematical competitions.

We concluded 2017 with the traditional Mathematical Advent Calendar – a quiz for pupils of Elementary and Secondary Schools, which was this year offered also in the English language. We reached a record number of participants since more than 500 young enthusiasts participated in the quiz.

After successful implementation of 17 projects in the framework of the ESS Call “Po kreativni poti do praktičnega znanja” in the years 2014 and 2015, we acquired funds for the implementation of five new projects in 2017 (altogether 26 projects were acquired by the University of Primorska). From March to July, 28 students, together with mentors from UP FAMNIT and mentors from collaborative companies/organizations, were involved in five projects.

The University of Primorska also successfully acquired funds for the implementation of 9 projects in the framework of the Open Call  for projects for cooperation with NGO's. From June to September, 22 students, together with mentors and experts from the local/regional environment, were involved in nine different projects.

Cooperation with NGOs and business is also taking place in classrooms since our faculty is regularly visited by experts from practice both at lectures and seminars. Exemplary cooperation with the business is also carried out within the framework of the activities organized by the University development center and university incubator of Primorska.

In 2017, the procedure for the renewal of the accreditation to three study programs - undergraduate study programs Biopsychology and Applied Kinesiology and the Master's study program Applied Kinesiology - was successfully completed. For all three study programs, the National Committee for Quality in Higher Education extended accreditation for an indefinite period of time.

Prior to this, UP FAMNIT, in accordance with the Higher Education Act, has already successfully completed all the procedures for regular renewal of accreditation for eleven study programs.

In May 2017, the Faculty of Built Environment of the University of Primorska was merged with UP FAMNIT. With this, the accredited master study program Sustainable Built Environment was transferred to our Faculty, which was already announced in the framework of UP FAMNIT for the new academic year (2017/18). UP FAMNIT acquired also a new field of study "(58) Architecture, Urbanism and Construction", in which we will be able to develop new study programs in the future, especially at the first and third Bologna levels.

With the academic year 2017/18, the undergraduate and master study program Applied Kinesiology were transferred to the University of Primorska, Faculty of Health Sciences.