Outstanding Achievements at the Special FRI Day 2020

• Posted On: December 07, 2020
• Posted By: tilen

This year, at the Day of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, we presented awards and recognitions to the most successful students and staff in a slightly different way. Due to the pandemic, the ceremonies were recorded remotely, and the award recipients were announced on December 4, 2020, through a premiere broadcast of the ceremonial event.

Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mojca Ciglarič highlighted in her opening address the importance of computer science and modern technologies, which made it possible for the world not to come to a complete standstill despite numerous restrictions. She also praised everyone—students, teachers, and staff—for quickly adapting to the new circumstances. Moreover, according to surveys, the overall atmosphere among employees even improved over the past year due to shared work and study challenges.

Students who achieved the best academic results in the past year received a certificate of achievement and a book prize, namely “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by historian and futurist Yuval Harari.

In the professional higher education programme Computer and Information Science, the award recipients were:

1. year: David Grabnar ;
2. year: Simon Bele ;
3. year: Marko Kitanoski .

In the university programme Computer and Information Science, the award recipients were:

1. year: Blaž Erzar , Andrej Jočić ;
2. year: Gregor Gabrovšek, Marko Ivanovski, Luka Končar, Domen Mohorčič ;
3. year: Boris Radovič, Uroš Šmajdek, Benjamin Džubur .

In the interdisciplinary university programme Computer Science and Mathematics, the award recipients were:

1. year: Tim Kmecl, Luka Opravš ;
2. year: Marko Hostnik, Tim Poštuvan, Katja Kunej ;
3. year: Anej Svete, Matija Teršek, Domen Vreš .

In the Master’s programme Computer and Information Science, the award recipients were:

1. year : Rok Grmek, Katja Logar ;
2. year: Lojze Žust .

In the interdisciplinary second-cycle programme Multimedia, the award recipient was:

1. year: David Valič .

The highest faculty award for students, the Faculty Prešeren Award, was awarded to:

• Jernej Vivod for the work Feature Evaluation with Generalizations of the Relief Algorithm (mentor: Prof. Dr. Marko Robnik Šikonja).
• Timotej Knez for the work Analysis of the Impact of Computer Game Difficulty on Measured Physiological Signals (mentor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Veljko Pejović, co-mentor: Martin Gjoreski).

Student Jaka Šircelj received the University Prešeren Award for his work Experimental Evaluation of Adversarial Examples and Defense Methods (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj).

Awards for excellence in teaching in the 2019/2020 academic year were awarded to:

• Assist. Prof. Dr. Aleksander Sadikov,
• Teaching Assistant Damjan Fujs

The President of the FRI Student Council, Arne Simonič , presented the Student Council Awards for Best Professor and Best Assistant , which were awarded to:

• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Patricio Bulić, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, university programme),
• Teaching Assistant Dr. Marko Poženel, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, university programme),
• Prof. Dr. Janez Demšar, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, professional programme),
• Teaching Assistant Damjan Fujs, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, professional programme),
• Prof. Dr. Zoran Bosnić, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, Master’s programme),
• Teaching Assistant Uroš Čibej, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, Master’s programme).

Special recognitions and awards for research work for postgraduate students were awarded to:

• Vitjan Zavrtanik for the papers A segmentation-based approach for polyp counting in the wild and Reconstruction by inpainting for visual anomaly detection (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj).
• Matej Dobrevski for the conference paper Adaptive Dynamic Window Approach for Local Navigation (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj).
• Borja Bovcon for the conference paper A water-obstacle separation and refinement network for unmanned surface vehicles (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan).

Special mentions for research work were also awarded to the following doctoral students:

• Domen Tabernik,
• Matej Vitek,
• Ratko Pilipović,
• Manca Žerovnik Mekuč,
• Jon Muhovič.

Special recognition for outstanding research achievement was awarded to:

• Alan Lukežič, Assist. Prof. Dr. Luka Čehovin Zajc and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan for the paper Performance Evaluation Methodology for Long-Term Single-Object Tracking .

Special recognition for collaboration with industry was awarded to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Erik Štrumbelj for building partnerships with companies, securing market funding for establishing and running the Master’s programme Data Science , and successfully obtaining funding for project and research work.

Special recognition for quality was awarded to the staff of the dean’s office for their high-quality and dedicated work, reflected in high employee satisfaction with the office’s services.

The Dean’s Award for work in professional services was awarded to Mateja Ravnik for her diligent and high-quality work in human resources, successful assumption of new responsibilities, and contribution to the implementation of the APIS business information system.

Special commendations were also given to two groups of staff who carried out extensive additional work alongside their regular duties:

• APIS group – a team supporting the development of the APIS business information system at the faculty and university level,
• COVID-19 coordination group – coordinating measures at the faculty to contain the pandemic since February.

We also presented all recipients of University of Ljubljana awards presented during the University Week :

• Title of Honorary Senator: Prof. Dr. Aleš Leonardis,
• Title of Professor Emeritus: Prof. Dr. Viljan Mahnič,
• Award for the most outstanding achievement: Bioinformatics Laboratory team for developing a tool for democratizing data analytics ,
• Golden Plaque (individual): Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj,
• Golden Plaque (group): VOT (Visual Object Tracking challenge) team,
• Ceremonial Certificate for young teachers: Assist. Prof. Dr. Matevž Pesek,
• Prešeren Award for students: Jaka Šircelj ,
• Ceremonial Certificate for best academic achievements: Marko Rus,
• Ceremonial Certificate for best academic achievements: Rok Grmek,
• Recognition for special student achievements: Valter Hudovernik (outstanding results in jiu-jitsu),
• Recognition for professional staff: Bojan Heric,
• Recognition for professional staff: APIS group , including Nives Macerl , Secretary of UL FRI.

A video recording of the event , which includes not only the award announcements but also remotely recorded responses and acknowledgements from the recipients, is available on the faculty’s YouTube channel: FRI Day 2020 .

Congratulations once again to all award recipients!