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In 2024, the University of Primorska and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Vilnius Tech) from Lithuania signed an agreement to establish a program to promote bilateral research cooperation. The program is open to research groups from all research sciences and fields and enables the financing of small scale one-year research projects.

The cooperation between UP and Radio Capris has been going on successfully for many years, with UP being particularly associated with them at events for students (such as Orientation Days or StartUP). The campaign they run in December connects the wider community, which is why UP responded to the invitation to participate in the campaign both last year and this year. Radio Capris traditionally organises the December charity campaign "Fridge of a Warm Heart", which helps families in need in our region.

In November, important funds were aquired, allowing our researchers to continue their work on ARIS projects. We were successful in aquiring one such project at UP IAM and two at UP FAMNIT.

On Thursday, 14 November 2024, the University of Primorska hosted a delegation from the Shandong University of Agriculture from the eastern part of China. The visit was attended by Prof. Lin Hai, Vice-Rector of the University, and Prof. Wang Hongwei, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Agronomy, who were accompanied by a driver.

ARCHI-SKIN researchers are looking for new collaborators to work on the ongoing ERC European Research Council funded project "Bioinspired living skin for architecture" (ARCHI-SKIN). The post also represents an opportunity to collaborate on the newly funded REMEDY project, which will be funded by EIC #101185862 starting in February 2025.

The Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG) is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. To mark this occasion, a formal event was held yesterday at the Union Hotel in the heart of Ljubljana.

On Thursday, 17 October 2024, a solemn promotion of Doctors of Science of the University of Primorska took place in the hall of the Armeria Palace in Koper. The Vice-rector of the University of Primorska prof. dr. Štefko Miklavič promoted 18 new Doctors of Science, who completed their doctoral studies between March and September 2024.  As of today, the University of Primorska has 360 Doctors of Science.

The BIOTECHNOLOGY SUMMIT WITH LEK'S RESEARCHERS' DAY AND TOUR OF THE NIB (National Institute of Biology) took place today, 16 October 2024, at NIB in Ljubljana. The event brought together prominent figures from academia and industry to discuss the latest advancements in biotechnology.

This year's Zois Prize winners include three employees of the University of Primorska. The award, named after the Slovenian researcher Žiga Zois, has been awarded in Slovenia since 1998 to all outstanding researchers whose work has made a lasting mark on scientific research and development in the Republic of Slovenia and has made a significant contribution to its development. We would like to extend our sincere congratulations to all the winners of this highest and most prestigious award in Slovenia.

On Tuesday, 8 October 2024, representatives from the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe visited the University of Primorska (UP). Programme Specialist Megumi Watanabe and Associate Project Officer Laura Bortolutti discussed with UP representatives about a potential collaboration in the field of Mental Health and Suicidology, thus fostering research and educational partnerships between UNESCO and UP.

ŠtartUP is a meet & greet event for ALL students of the University of Primorska  with which we mark the start of the new academic year. It will occur on 5 October 2024, from 12 pm, in the Žusterna Seaside Park 

Community Day: Changing the Understanding of Struggles and Strengthening Support for Youth successfully brought together nearly 200 participants, who gathered to highlight the importance of adolescent mental health. The event took place on September 27 in Koper, in the Armeria Hall and at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska.

September 16, 2024 – The European Project "Modular Mental Health Toolbox" (MentBox) officially launches with an event hosted by the Andalusian Health Service in Seville, Spain. Funded by the EU, MentBox aims to bridge the gap between the best practices in mental health care and their implementation across EU Member States

For the first time in Slovenia, an ERC (European Research Council) grant recipient, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anna Sandak, InnoRenew CoE Deputy director and professor at the University of Primorska, has successfully secured funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) through the Pathfinder Open Call. This marks an important milestone as it is also the first Pathfinder project in Slovenia to be led by a female coordinator.

Today, on 13 August, Nina Krohne successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled Suicidal Behavior in Women: The Role of Intimate Partner Violence and Resilience to Suicidality, under the supervision of Associate Professor Vita Poštuvan and Professor Diego De Leo.

Nina Krohne, student of the doctoral study programme Suicidology and Mental Health at the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies (UP FAMNIT), will defend her doctoral dissertation entitled »Suicidal behavior in women: The role of intimate partner violence and resilience to suicidality«, prepared under the supervision of mentor Assoc. Prof. Vita Poštuvan and co-mentor Prof. Diego de Leo.

The defence will take place on Tuesday, 13th August 2024 at 14.30 at the lecture room Famnit-VP2.

The doctoral dissertation is available at the UP library.

The research team of the Slovenian Centre for Suicide Research UP IAM, under the leadership of the Deputy Head Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vita Poštuvan, was again successful in obtaining research funding. In the period 2024-2026, the Centre's researchers will implement the project Ker te štekam: Razvoj trajnostne mreže strokovnjakov in njihovih veščin za preprečevanje samomorilnega vedenja mladih ter obravnavo posledic samomora, funded under the Ministry of Health's call for Development of Mental Health Programmes for Children, Adolescents and Young Adults.

The University of Primorska is seeking a dynamic and motivated PhD candidate to work on development and evaluation of deconstructable timber-concrete composite systems. The researcher will be employed as a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. study program: Renewable Materials for Healthy Built Environments.

Today, 11 July 2024, we welcomed another Doctor of Science at UP.

Nevena Pivač, student of the doctoral study programe Mathematical Sciences at UP FAMNIT will defend her doctoral thesis Structure and algorithms for graph classes: new results on minimal separators and independent sets; under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Martin Milanič.

The defence will take place on Thursday, 11 July 2024 at 11:00 in Famnit-VP3 and on Zoom (Meeting ID: fam.vp3) / (Passcode: UPFamnit)

The doctoral disertation will be available in the UP library.

You are cordially invited!

InnoRenew CoE, together with the University of Primorska, successfully hosted the 67th International Congress of Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST), held 30 June- 4 July 2024 at the Bernardin Hotel Congress Centre.

Prof. Dr. Andrej Brodnik from the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies at UP FAMNIT an UP IAM was selected as a member of the informal Commission expert group for the development of guidelines on high-quality informatics.

In June, the Department of Technology at UP IAM acquired a project under the HORIZON RIA - Research and Innovation Action programme, which will begin in September 2024. The Departments of Mathematics at UP IAM and UP Famnit have once again been successful in the Public Call for (co)financing scientific research cooperation between the Republic of Slovenia and the United States of America for the years 2024 – 2026 by the Slovenian Public Agency for Scientific Research and Innovation Activities (ARIS).

At the meeting of the T4EU Student Council on June 25, 2024, the student representatives of the Transform4Europe member universities decided on the new leadership. Elections were held for the President, the Vice-President and the student representative in the Steering Committee. Lana Erjavec, a student at the UP Faculty of Health Sciences, president of UP FVZ Student Council and president of UP Student Council was elected as the new President of the T4EU Student Council.

Today concluded the 50th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science - WG2024, which took place from June 19 to 21, 2024, in Gozd - Martuljek in Kranjska Gora.

On Wednesday, June 19, 2024, the opening of the University Store - nakUP - took place in the University Library (UP UK), which the university had opened early for Transform4Europe Week: Beyond Borders (May, 20-24). With the opening speech, the ceremonial cutting of the ribbon and the purchase, it was officially opened by the Rector of the UP, Prof. Dr. Klavdija Kutnar and the Director of the UP UK, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jonatan Vinkler.

On May 15, 2024, University of Primorska (UP) announced a call for a doctoral position in the field of Complex Network Analysis. The candidate will be employed at the Andrej Marušič Institute (UP IAM) within the Computer Science and Informatics group and will become a PhD student at UP, as part of the doctoral program in Computer Science and Informatics at the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies (UP FAMNIT).

On March 15, 2024, University of Primorska published the Call for Young Researchers at the UP in 2024 for vacancies for young researchers who will train for the profession of researcher and carry out doctoral studies at UP, on the basis of a full-time employment contract, for a period of up to four years. 

The UP University Healthcare Centre, which operates in the Koper Health Centre (ZD Koper),will be CLOSED from July to September 2024.

In May, a new project from the Horizon programme was approved at the University of Primorska. This project, within the MSCA Staff Exchanges framework, aims to promote innovative international, cross-sectoral, and interdisciplinary collaboration in research and innovation through the exchange of personnel, knowledge, and ideas at all stages of the innovation chain.

Between 28 and 30 May 2024, the "Computers in Scientific Discoveries (CSD10)" conference took place at the University of Leuven in Belgium, bringing together researchers from the fields of mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and graph theory the 10th edition of this conference.

The University of Primorska, in cooperation with the University of Trieste, organised the first T4EU Week (Transform4Europe Week: Beyond Borders), in the new series of European University Transform4Europe Weeks, from 20 to 24 May 2024.

The successfully concluded traditional conference TRIPLE i: Intuition, Imagination, Innovation in Suicidology, organized for the 15th year by the Slovenian Center for Suicide Research (SCSR) at the University of Primorska, Andrej Marušič Institute (UP IAM). The event, held in memory of the late Prof. Andrej Marušič around the time of his birthday, aims to promote intuition, imagination, and innovation in suicide research and prevention.

INNORENEW COE AND UNIVERSITY OF PRIMORSKA ARE ORGANIZING A CONFERENCE ON RENEWABLE MATERIALS AND THEIR USE FOR CREATING SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS.

The International Conference InnoRenew CoE 2024 (IRIC2024) invites submissions of abstracts and active participation at the conference until 24 May 2024. The conference, which will be held for the sixth consecutive year, will take place at the InnoRenew CoE building in Izola from 11-12 September 2024.

The University of Primorska, in cooperation with the University of Trieste, is organizing a T4EU Week (Transfor4Europe Week: Beyond Borders), from 20 to 24 May 2024. The main goal of the event is networking, exchange of views, experiences, knowledge and cooperation between students and staff from all 11 partner universities.

The University of Primorska (UP) is a medium-sized, internationally engaged university with 5,745 students, of whom 1,122 (or 19.5%) come from 39 foreign countries. It has 730 staff. The UP has 480 researchers and higher education teachers, of whom 59 (or 12.3%) come from abroad. The UP hosts more than 200 international researchers every year and enrols 190 PhD students.

The NEB Academy, a flagship initiative of the European Commission, has set out to accelerate the up- and re-skilling of architecture, construction, and engineering (ACE) professionals and adjacent actors. Through a network of training hubs across Europe that bundle regional competencies and facilitate access to contents on sustainability, circularity and bio-based material knowledges. A strong partnership of universities, regional training centres, authorities and EU associations has kicked of the NEBA Alliance to co-create this novel platform for the construction sector.

The University of Primorska is looking for a student to support us in the project management of the NEBA Alliance project, which is coordinated by the University of Primorska and formally implemented at the Andrej Marušič Institute.

The Departments of Mathematics of the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies (FAMNIT) and Andrej Marušič Institute (IAM) of the University of Primorska, are seeking a top early-career researcher for a postdoctoral position in the area of structural and algorithmic graph theory, in connection with a research grant of Prof. dr. Martin Milanič, "Beyond Sparsity: Graph Classes and Width Parameters" funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency.

For several years now, the first Sunday in May (5 May) has been marked by the Wings for life run, which takes place in three ways - at a larger event, where runners are chased by a pursuit vehicle (this will be in Ljubljana) or with an app. This can be used by anyone who is going to run on Sunday at 13:00, or you can join one of the "app runs" organised by the app, where you are chased by a virtual car. This year, for the second time, this type of run will take place by the sea, organised by Sport UP, which is responsible for the recreation of students and staff at the University of Primorska. We will run from the building of the UP FTŠ Turistica to the last pier of the Portorož beach (short run, turning point after 2 km), to Seče (medium run, 4.4 km one way) or to the Sečovlje Salt Pans (8 km). This year our event is also supported by Radio Capris.

The University of Nova Gorica has announced a public call to tender for a young researchers in the field of algebra.

Celebrating UP's 20th anniversary on Wednesday, employees asked themselves how we can be an even better version of ourselves, a UP 2.0 version. This kind of reflection is not limited to round anniversaries, however, but also spurs us on, which is why the name for Wednesday's employee activities has been kept. We would like to thank all those who have made the effort to organise sports, educational and cultural activities, based on the wishes expressed in the employee surveys, for the beautiful act of building good and collegial relations. 

The International Conference InnoRenew CoE 2024 (IRIC2024) invites submissions of abstracts and active participation at the conference until 10 May 2024.  The conference, which will be held for the sixth consecutive year, will take place at the InnoRenew CoE building in Izola from 11-12 September 2024.

The University of Primorska has published a Call for Young Researchers who will be trained over the next four years in a research and study programme. Each young researcher will carry out a research project under supervision, which will be structured within the framework of the specific research programme.

In 2024, there are four positions open for young researchers, with two positions available at UP IAM.

The European Commission selected the research institute InnoRenew CoE, out of 530 applications, as one of the finalists for the New European Bauhaus Prizes 2024. Today the public voting for the prizes started.

The application prepared by InnoRenew CoE experts stood out from over 530 applications for its quality, alignment with NEB values and principles, and potential to promote beauty, sustainability, and inclusion.

The research team of the Slovenian Centre for Suicide Research UP IAM has once again succeeded in securing a new project. In the period 2024-2026, the centre's researchers will implement the MentBox project - Modular Mental Health Toolbox, funded under the EU4Health programme of the European Commission.

University of Primorska's researchers attended the kick off meeting of the LIFE BE-WoodEN – Buildings and Education in Wood Ecosystem for the New European Bauhaus project. It was held 27-28 February 2024 in Genoa, Italy.

You are kindly invited to the third lecture entitled »Königsberg: A Hidden Key to Graph Theory's Door,« which will be held on Wednesday, 21 February, at 18:00, in the lecture room - VP3 and via ZOOM.

The lecture will be given by Dr. Blas Fernandez from UP FAMNIT and UP IAM.

The Department of Information Sciences and Technologies (DIST) at UP FAMNIT is seeking a top early-career researcher for a postdoctoral position in the area of psychologically-informed user modeling under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Marko Tkalčič.

The Jean Monnet University, our partner university from T4EU is organizing the CREEE 2024: FUTURE of ENTREPRENEURSHIP conference where you'll delve into the world of entrepreneurship education and its transformative potential. Taking place from 15-17 April 2024 in Roanne, France, this event promises insightful discussions and practical insights into shaping the entrepreneurs of the future.

In February 2024, we are commencing a two-year research work as part of the international project LIFE BE-WoodEN – Buildings and Education in Wood Ecosystem for the New European Bauhaus, carried out within the New European Bauhaus Academy Pioneer Hub for Sustainable Built Environments with Renewable Materials (NEBAP Hub).

The researcher will be employed at the University of Primorska in the Construction Engineering group and will enroll as a doctoral candidate at the University of Primorska within the doctoral study program Renewable Materials for Healthy Built Environments at UP FAMNIT.

The 8th edition of the HCI Slovenia Conference took place on Friday, January 26, 2023 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics.

HCI SI is an annual gathering of experts in the field of human-computer interactions (HCI) in Slovenia and nearby regions, organized by Bled SIGCHI. This year's conference edition was co-organized by HICUP Lab (Humans Interacting with Computers at the University of Primorska).