Monday, 19 December 2022 DR. BOJAN KUZMA RECEIVES THE ZOIS PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS IN LINEAR ALGEBRA
On Monday, 19 December 2022, this year's Zois Prizes and Awards, the highest national prizes for achievements in scientific research and development in the Republic of Slovenia and Puh Prizes and Awards, the highest national awards in the field of inventions, technological and non-technological developments and the use of scientific results from all scientific fields in the introduction of innovations into economic and social practice, was awarded. They are awarded to researchers and innovators whose achievements have made a lasting contribution to the development of scientific research, development, and innovations in the Republic of Slovenia. Among this year's recipients is Dr. Bojan Kuzma, a full professor and scientific advisor at UP, who received the award for his outstanding achievements in the field of linear algebra.
Prof. Dr. Bojan Kuzma is a full professor at UP Famnit and a scientific advisor at UP IAM (and a scientific advisor at IMFM). His work is distinguished by a strong international involvement - he is both a renowned researcher in the field of linear algebra, or matrix theory, which he often intertwines with other sub-branches of mathematics, and one of the leading experts in the theory of preservatives. A strong indication of his international influence is his editorship of the journal Linear and Multilinear Algebra, which is considered elite in the field of matrix theory.
He received the Zois Prize for his work in two key areas: the first is in the area of (in)commutativity between elements in different mathematical structures, one of the most important relations in many mathematical fields, and also for his understanding in quantum mechanics. In a number of papers (with co-authors), Dr. Kuzma has studied commutativity through the so-called commutativity graph, thus linking the problem to graph theory, drawing on matrix theory, operator theory, and abstract algebra, and thus studying (in)commutativity with tools that combine mathematical sub-branches.
The second is conservation theory, a field that has been systematically developing over the last decades, and a typical problem requires the characterisation of all mappings on a given set (or vector space) of matrices/operators that preserve a given invariant. The use of characterisations is common in other branches of mathematics as well as in physics. Dr. Kuzma's contribution to the field is the invention of tools and approaches that are needed in the study of much more complex nonlinear problems since his methods go beyond the classical framework of linear algebra and often reach into other mathematical fields.
Last but not least, Dr. Kuzma's work is also important for the field of mathematics at UP from an organisational, professional and pedagogical point of view, as he is a long-standing head of the department at UP Famnit, coordinator of study programmes at both undergraduate and graduate level, and is responsible for the promotion of mathematics at the national and global level - the latter as editor of Image, a journal dedicated to the promotion of linear algebra, published by the International Linear Algebra Society.
We congratulate Dr. Kuzma and wish him many more successes!
