Awards for the Best at FRI Day 2023

• Posted On: November 29, 2023
• Posted By: tilen

At the Day of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, on November 28, 2023, we awarded the most successful students and employees and recognized other achievements of the past year.

Award recipients, invited guests, attending students, and staff were welcomed at the beginning by Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mojca Ciglarič , who in her address emphasized the importance of meeting in person, as this strengthens our professional and personal relationships, which are the foundation of mutual trust and successful collaboration. She expressed pride in the award recipients and in the faculty community, which continues to grow both in size and quality.

Students who performed best in their studies over the past year received a book award, namely »Leadership and Self-Deception«, published by The Arbinger Institute.

In the professional higher education programme Computer and Information Science, awards were given to:

1. year: Bojan Dogandžić,
2. year: Jakob Jelovčan, Miha Lazić,
3. year: Bernard Kuchler, Janez Sedeljšak.

In the university study programme Computer and Information Science, awards were given to:

1. year: Dimitar Trajkov, Samo Golež, Vojko Hysz, Nikola Brković, Matjaž Pogačnik, Rok Hladin, Dimitar Djorlev, Lovro Sikošek,
2. year: Primož Zidanšek, Lazar Đoković, Petja Furlan,
3. year: Jovana Videnović, Jaša Samec.

In the Master’s study programme Computer and Information Science, awards were given to:

1. year: Žiga Drab, Žiga Rot, Žan Kogovšek,
2. year: Jer Pelhan.

In the interdisciplinary university programme Computer Science and Mathematics, awards were given to:

1. year: Đorđe Stevanović, Filip Trplan, Jernej Oblak,
2. year: Domen Hočevar.

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

1. year: Lan Zukanović.

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

• Darian Tomašević for the work Eye image generation with deep generative models (mentor: Prof. Dr. Vitomir Štruc, co-mentor: Prof. Dr. Peter Peer).
• Žiga Trojer for the work Tracking transparent objects with deep learning (mentor: Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan, co-mentor: Dr. Alan Lukežič).
• Matija Teršek for the work Fast detection of water obstacles for autonomous vessels considering hardware constraints (mentor: Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan, co-mentor: Lojze Žust, MSc).
• Romi Koželj for the work Modeling the temporal evolution of seismic activity using network analysis (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lovro Šubelj, co-mentor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Jurij Bajc).
• Nikola Đukić for the work Discriminative learning for object counting with few training examples (mentor: Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan)

Awards for excellence in teaching in the 2022/2023 academic year, given to educators with the highest student evaluations, were awarded to:

• Prof. Dr. Miha Mraz,
• Assist. Dr. Daša Mesarič Štesl,

Representatives of the FRI Student Council, President Lara Nićetin and Žiga Maj Špiler, presented the Student Council awards for Best Professor and Best Assistant, which were awarded to:

• Prof. Dr. Janez Demšar, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, professional programme),
• Assist. Damjan Fujs, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, professional programme),
• Assist. Prof. Dr. Luka Fuerst, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, university programme),
• Assist. Marko Poženel, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, university programme),
• Prof. Dr. Matej Kristan, Best Professor (Computer and Information Science, Master’s programme),
• Assist. Žiga Pirnar, Best Assistant (Computer and Information Science, Master’s programme),

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

• Nicolas Larue for the paper ” SeeABLE: Soft Discrepancies and Bounded Contrastive Learning for Exposing Deepfakes “, accepted at the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision.
• Lojze Žust for the paper ” LaRS: A Diverse Panoptic Maritime Obstacle Detection Dataset and Benchmark “, accepted at the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision.
• Matej Vitek for the paper ” Exploring bias in sclera segmentation models: a group evaluation approach “, published in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
• Matej Klemen for the paper ” Enhancing deep neural networks with morphological information “, published in Natural Language Engineering.

Special awards for outstanding research achievements (for FRI staff) were awarded to:

• Assist. Dr. Alina-Luminita Machidon and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Veljko Pejović for the paper ” Deep learning for compressive sensing: a ubiquitous systems perspective “, published in Artificial Intelligence Review.
• Janja Žagar and Assist. Prof. Dr. Jurij Mihelič for the paper ” Big data collection in pharmaceutical manufacturing and its use for product quality predictions “, published in Scientific Data.

Special recognitions were awarded to:

• Dr. Andrej Brodnik and Assist. Prof. Dr. Tomaž Hočevar for organizing and conducting the ICPC CERC international programming competition (2021–2023),
• Research Fellow Dr. Vida Groznik and Assist. Prof. Dr. Aleksander Sadikov for successfully organizing and conducting the ESSAI 2023 international summer school,
• Assist. Prof. Dr. Slavko Žitnik for successfully organizing and conducting the ESSLLI 2023 international summer school.

A special commendation for cooperation with industry was awarded to Assist. Prof. Dr. Matevž Pesek for successful knowledge transfer to the market and connecting the faculty with industry.

Awards for quality, recognizing excellent and dedicated work reflected in significantly increased employee satisfaction, were given to:

• Financial and Accounting Service ,
• Research Service.

The Dean’s awards for professional staff were awarded to:

• Andreja Nič for her contribution to restoring the Financial and Accounting Service and ensuring quality, as well as her decisive and calm leadership,
• Anamarija Meglič for her contribution to restoring the Research Service, her proactiveness, and commitment to quality leadership.

We also presented all recipients of university awards, granted by the Rector during the University Week:

• University Prešeren Award: Jakob Božič for the work Semi-supervised learning for surface defect detection (mentor: Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj; co-mentor: Lojze Žust, MSc).
• Golden Plaque of the University of Ljubljana (group): Members of the Computer Graphics and Multimedia Research Group
• Most prominent research achievement (FRI proposal): Assist. Prof. Jana Faganeli Pucer and Peter Mlakar for the research ANET method for post-processing weather forecasts
• Charter for young higher education teachers: Assist. Damjan Fujs
• Charter for students for best academic achievements: Simon Bele, Rok Grmek
• Special student achievements: Jaka Gaal, Nina Velikanje
• Award for professional staff: APIS team – Alenka Bone, Klavdija Kitek, Nives Macerl, Mateja Malešič, Anita Strmole, Urška Žnidarič

Congratulations once again to all award recipients!