Friday, 18 March 2022 Prizes and recognitions of the University of Primorska awarded to employees and students at the 19th Annual Academy
In 2003, on March 17 exactly, University of Primorska was entered in the court register. Yesterday, March 17, 2022, we celebrated its 19th birthdday on the Ceremonial Academy in the Hall of St. Francis, where awards and prizes of the University of Primorska were presented.
In the introductory part of the ceremony, Klavdija Kutnar, PhD, Rector of the University of Primorska, greeted the visitors and highlighted the key achievements of the last year. Katja Kosem, Vice President of the UP Student Council, presented the students' wishes in regard to the covid-19 epidemic. The keynote speaker was Mag. Robert Ljoljo, President of the Management Board of Lek d. d., who stressed the importance of cooperation in mixed research teams, as they bring together different views. Among other, he mentioned a joint project with UP FAMNIT, which allowed mutual exchange of knowledge.
The Rector, together with the Vice-Rector and the Deans, presented the awards of the University of Primorska, among them employees and students of UP FAMNIT.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jasna Prezelj
Nominated by UP FAMNIT and UP IAM, the Golden Plaque of the University of Primorska is awarded to Jasna Prezelj for her contribution to the development of the UP and for her important role in the successful realization of the 8th European Congress of Mathematics, which strengthened the reputation and visibility of UP in both the global university network and the wider Slovenian society.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jasna Prezelj is a higher education teacher in the field of mathematics who received her Doctorate in 2000 from the University of Ljubljana and is the leading expert of her generation in the field of complex analysis. She has been employed at UP since 2014. In addition to scientific research and pedagogical work, she also promotes the popularization of science and the visibility of the UP. She is the founder of the Mathematical Advent Calendar, which UP FAMNIT has created annually from 2015 onwards. As an extremely active member of the organizing committee of the 8th European Congress of Mathematics (taking care of sponsorship and donor funds, organization of the contests, organization of the section in the field of complex and quaternionic geometry and of satellite conferences for representatives of Slovenian insurance companies and actuarial associations), she contributed to its successful implementation in 2021.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jasna Prezelj
Prof. Dr. Elena Bužan
Nominated by UP FAMNIT and UP IAM, the University Award for Scientific Excellence of the University of Primorska for 2021 is awarded to Elena Bužan for the publication of 10 original scientific articles in the Web of Science in 2021.
Prof. Dr. Elena Bužan received her Doctorate from the University of Ljubljana in 2007, and has been employed at UP FAMNIT since its establishment. Her research area includes a number of intertwined sciences, such as molecular ecology, biochemistry, conservation biology, conservation and the genetics of population and immunology. A special emphasis of her research is on the use of molecular biology techniques in basic and applied research in the fields of evolution, biogeography and conservation of natural heritage.
Her bibliography consists of 53 original scientific articles (10 of which were published in 2021) in the Web of Science database and includes 523 in-text citations. Among other things she is successful at obtaining international projects. She is the project manager of Horizon "STEP CHANGE: Science Transformation in EuroPe through Citizens involvement in HeAlth, coNservation and enerGy rEsearch", and has participated in the successful implementation of three more Horizon projects and in a number of other research projects.
The nominee is also a national coordinator of the European Reference Genome Atlas initiative and a member of the editorial board of the international scientific journal Ornitologia Neotropical.
Prof. Dr. Elena Bužan
Besfort Shala
Nominated by UP FAMNIT, the »Srečko Kosovel« award for students is awarded to Besfort Shala.
Besfort Shala, under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Russ Woodroofe, wrote the final project paper titled “The Probabilistic Zeta Function of a Finite Lattice”. In the work, Besfort examines a definition of Ken Brown's 2000 article. The little-studied definition of this article generalizes the Dirichlet series, obtained from (the coset lattice of) a group, to a similar series obtained from any lattice. The original purpose of the task was for the student to try to calculate what happens to this series on simple cases, such as a partition lattice. The student was quick to notice that the partition lattice does not usually give ordinary Dirichlet series because rational numbers appear in the base. As a result, he continued to demonstrate a more cautious version of this as well as similar results for other types of lattices. A student research project is successful when a student tells a mentor something they do not already know. According to the mentor, this happened early and several times in this project. In fact, the student was quite independent, as several ideas for definitions came mostly alone. The result of the project is a well-written dissertation, which is almost a publication-worthy article.
Amar Bapić
Nominated by Student Council UP and UP FAMNIT, the Recognition of the University of Primorska for students of the University of Primorska is given to Amar Bapić.
Amar Bapić is a doctoral student of 3rd year Mathematical Sciences at UP FAMNIT. From 2018, he has been an active member of the UP FAMNIT Student Council and, from 2020, also its Vice-President. During this time, he actively participated in the organization of numerous events for students. He aims to equip students with as much useful information as possible, and at the same time he remains available to them for individual questions. He also manages the (graphic) creation of content by getting as close as possible to the students. Since 2019, he has been a representative of students on the UP Management Board. In the academic year 2020/21, he was the head of volunteers at the 8th European Congress of Mathematics, hosted by our university in Portorož in June 2021. In addition to his role as a volunteer coordinator, he helped with the creation of a large pool of promotional materials and in obtaining databases to facilitate analysis of information about congress participants. He was also part of the technical support group for the operation of the Zoom videoconferencing system at the location and online. At any given opportunity he also promotes the UP on the international level (visits to primary and secondary schools, universities, presentations). Among other things, he toured the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Tuzla this past year, presenting the benefits of volunteering at 8ECM and study programmes at UP, and presented a system of cooperation of foreign students with tutor students at Erasmus Days 2021 organized by UP. His role as a tutor at UP FAMNIT began in 2021.
Amar Bapić
The list of award recipients and the justifications can be viewed here.
We congratulate all receipents of The University of Primorska awards!
