Prof. dr. Danijel Skočaj
Full Professor
Dean
T: +386 1 479 8225
E:Send a message
Office hours: Thursday, 13:00-14:00
Room: R2.57 - Kabinet
Description

Danijel Skočaj is a professor and the dean of the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science. His main research interests lie in the fields of computer vision, machine learning, and cognitive robotics. In the framework of basic and applied research, he's been developing and introducing new advanced methods of deep learning and computer vision for solving complex problems requiring processing of visual information. He is also interested in the ethical aspects of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, and the influence of the development of these technologies on society. He's been lecturing the courses from the fields of computer vision, cognitive robotics, and deep learning. He has led or collaborated in a number of projects from these research areas, such as EU projects, national research projects as well as industry-funded applied projects. Through the research and development applied projects he's been facilitating the transfer of research findings into practical applications. He is an ELLIS member and has served as President of both the IEEE Slovenia Computer Society Chapter and the Slovenian Pattern Recognition Society.

Awards

  • 2024: The 2023–2024 Best Paper Award from the Pattern Recognition journal.

  • 2012, 2023, 2024: Award for exceptional scientific achievement in Republic of Slovenia (ARIS).

  • 2023: First place in the perception challenge on 2th Cloth and Manipulation Challenge, part of 7th Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition of ICRA 2023.

  • 2021: Prometheus of science award for excellence in communication for 2020, Slovenian Science Foundation

  • 2021: Certificate of achievement for one of the top downloaded papers for 2020  in the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing

  • 2020: The Golden Plaque for exceptional contributions to the development of scientific, pedagogical or artistic endeavours, and for strengthening the reputation of the University of Ljubljana.
  • 2019: Special recognition for outstanding research achievement, Faculty of Computer and information science, UL
  • 2013, 2017, 2019: Best paper in the Pattern recognition session award, International Electrotechnical and Computer Science Conference ERK 2013, 2017, 2019, Portorož, Slovenia.
  • 2002: Best PhD paper award, 11th International Electrotechnical and Computer Science Conference ERK 2002, Portorož, Slovenia.
  • 2002: Best paper award, 26th Workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition (ÖAGM/AAPR), Graz, Austria.

 

Awards of my students:

  • 2026: Jožef Stefan Golden Emblem, JSI (Vitjan Zavrtanik)

  • 2026: Dr. Ana Mayer Kansky Award for an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, University of Ljubljana (Vitjan Zavrtanik)

  • 2026: Award of Excellence for an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, Slovenian Pattern Recognition Society (Vitjan Zavrtanik)

  • 2023: dr. Uroš Seljak award for the best scientific publications, University of Ljubljana (Jakob Božič)

  • 2020, 2023: University Prešeren Award for Students of the University of Ljubljana for outstanding achievements in science and art (Jakob Božič, Jaka Šircelj)

  • 2013, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025: Faculty Prešeren Award, UL, Faculty of Computer and information Science (Klemen Istenič, Kristian Žarn, Vid Rijavec, Valter Hudovernik, Matic Fučka, Blaž Rolih)

Classes
Laboratory
Projects
Past projects
Publications

  • SAMEC, Jaša, RIJAVEC, Vid, PELJHAN, Marko, GRM, Aleksander, ANDROJNA, Andrej, SKOČAJ, Danijel, DOBREVSKI, Matej. ISOPoT : imaging sonar odometry by point tracking. IEEE Robotics and automation letters, ISSN 2377-3766. 23 Oct. 2026.

  • TABERNIK, Domen, NIMAC, Peter, JERIĆEVIĆ, Jan, SKOČAJ, Danijel, GAMS, Andrej. Vision-based 6-DoF grasp pose estimation for robot cloth unfolding. IEEE transactions on cybernetics, ISSN 2168-2275. [Online ed.], Sep. 2026, [in press].

  • ROLIH, Blaž, FUČKA, Matic, SKOČAJ, Danijel. No label left behind : a unified surface defect detection model for all supervision regimes. Journal of intelligent manufacturing, ISSN 0956-5515. Aug. 2026, vol. 37.

  • ŠTEPEC, Dejan, JERŠE, Maja, ĐOKIĆ, Snežana, JERUC, Jera, ZIDAR, Nina, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Patherea : cell detection and classification for the 2020s. Medical Image Analysis, ISSN 1361-8423. [Online ed.], Feb. 2026, vol. 108.

  • KAMŠEK, Ana Rebeka, RUIZ-ZEPEDA, Francisco, TABERNIK, Domen, VIDERGAR, Jan, LOGAR, Anja, KREGAR, Ambrož, SKOČAJ, Danijel, DRAŽIĆ, Goran, HODNIK, Nejc. Large-scale identical-location electron microscopy enables quantifying nanoparticulate electrocatalyst degradation. Nature communications, ISSN 2041-1723. 2026.

  • FUČKA, Matic, ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, SKOČAJ, Danijel. ObjectCore – efficient few-shot logical anomaly detection using object representations. V: 2026 IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision : WACV 2026 : proceedings. IEEE Computer Society, 2026. Proceedings (IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision. Online), ISSN 2642-9381.

  • BOŽIČ, Jakob, FUČKA, Matic, ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Robustness of unsupervised methods for image surface-anomaly detection. Pattern analysis and applications, ISSN 1433-7541. [Print ed.], Jun. 2025, vol. 28.

  • FUČKA, Matic, ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, SKOČAJ, Danijel. SALAD - semantics-aware logical anomaly detection. V: 2025 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision : ICCV 2025 : proceedings. IEEE Computer Society, 2025. Proceedings (IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. Online), ISSN 2380-7504.

  • FUČKA, Matic, ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, SKOČAJ, Danijel. TransFusion – a transparency-based diffusion model for anomaly detection. V: LEONARDIS, Aleš (ur.). Computer vision - ECCV 2024. Part 35 : proceedings. Springer, 2025. Lecture notes in computer science, 15093, ISSN 1611-3349.

  • ROLIH, Blaž, FUČKA, Matic, SKOČAJ, Danijel. SuperSimpleNet : unifying unsupervised and supervised learning for fast and reliable surface defect detection. V: ANTONACOPOULOS, Apostolos (ur.). Pattern recognition. Part 10 : ICPR 2024 : proceedings. Springer, 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 15310, ISSN 1611-3349.

  • TABERNIK, Domen, MUHOVIČ, Jon Natanael, URBAS, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Center direction network for grasping point localization on cloths. IEEE Robotics and automation letters, ISSN 2377-3766. Oct. 2024, vol. 9.

  • DOBREVSKI, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Dynamic adaptive dynamic window approach. IEEE transactions on robotics, ISSN 1552-3098. [Print ed.], May 2024, vol. 40.

  • TABERNIK, Domen, MUHOVIČ, Jon Natanael, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Dense center-direction regression for object counting and localization with point supervision. Pattern recognition : the journal of the Pattern Recognition Society, ISSN 0031-3203. [Print ed.], Sep. 2024, vol. 153.

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Keep DRÆMing : discriminative 3D anomaly detection through anomaly simulation. Pattern recognition letters : an official publication of the International Association for Pattern Recognition, ISSN 0167-8655. [Print ed.], May 2024, vol. 181.

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, MAROLT, Matija, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Anomalous sound detection by feature-level anomaly simulation. V: 2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing : proceedings. IEEE, 2024. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (Online), ISSN 2379-190X.

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Cheating depth : enhancing 3D surface anomaly detection via depth simulation. V: 2024 IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision : WACV 2024 : proceedings. IEEE Computer Society, 2024. IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (Online), ISSN 2472-6796.

  • TABERNIK, Domen, ŠUC, Matic, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Automated detection and segmentation of cracks in concrete surfaces using joined segmentation and classification deep neural network. Construction & building materials, ISSN 0950-0618. [Print ed.], Dec. 2023, vol. 408.

  • ČEHOVIN ZAJC, Luka, REZELJ, Anže, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Low-cost open-source robotic platform for education. IEEE transactions on learning technologies, ISSN 1939-1382. [Online ed.], Feb. 2023, vol. 16.

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. DSR – a dual subspace re-projection network for surface anomaly detection. V: AVIDAN, Shai (ur.). Computer vision - ECCV 2022 : 17th European Conference : proceedings. Part 31. Springer, 2022. Lecture notes in computer science, 13691, ISSN 1611-3349.

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. DRAEM – a discriminatively trained reconstruction embedding for surface anomaly detection. V: 2021 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision : ICCV 2021 : proceedings. IEEE Computer Society, 2021.

  • BOŽIČ, Jakob, TABERNIK, Domen, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Mixed supervision for surface-defect detection : from weakly to fully supervised learning. Computers in industry, ISSN 0166-3615. [Print ed.], Aug. 2021, vol. 129

  • RAČKI, Domen, TOMAŽEVIČ, Dejan, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Detection of surface defects on pharmaceutical solid oral dosage forms with convolutional neural networks. Neural computing & applications, ISSN 0941-0643, 2021

  • DOBREVSKI, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Deep reinforcement learning for map-less goal-driven robot navigation. International journal of advanced robotic systems, ISSN 1729-8814, Jan./Feb. 2021, vol. 18, no. 1

  • ZAVRTANIK, Vitjan, KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Reconstruction by inpainting for visual anomaly detection. Pattern recognition : the journal of the Pattern Recognition Society, ISSN 0031-3203. [Print ed.], Apr. 2021, vol. 112

  • DOBREVSKI, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Adaptive dynamic window approach for local navigation. V: 2020 IEEE/RSJ IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October, 25-29, 2020, Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2020, str. 6930-6936

  • TABERNIK, Domen, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Deep learning for large-scale traffic-sign detection and recognition. IEEE transactions on intelligent transportation systems, ISSN 1524-9050. [Print ed.], Apr. 2020, vol. 21, no. 4, str. 1427-1440

  • TABERNIK, Domen, ŠELA, Samo, SKVARČ, Jure, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Segmentation-based deep-learning approach for surface-defect detection. Journal of intelligent manufacturing, ISSN 0956-5515, Mar. 2020, vol. 31, no. 3, str. 759-776

  • MAVER, Jasna, SKOČAJ, Danijel. EL: local image descriptor based on extreme responses to partial derivatives of 2D Gaussian function. Mathematical problems in engineering, ISSN 1563-5147, 2019, vol. 2019 

  • URŠIČ, Peter, LEONARDIS, Aleš, SKOČAJ, Danijel, KRISTAN, Matej. Learning part-based spatial models for laser-vision-based room categorization. The international journal of robotics research, ISSN 0278-3649. [Print ed.], 2017, vol. 36, no. 4, str. 379-402

  • SKOČAJ, Danijel, VREČKO, Alen, MAHNIČ, Marko, JANÍČEK, Miroslav, KRUIJFF, Geert-Jan M., HANHEIDE, Marc, HAWES, Nick, WYATT, Jeremy L., KELLER, Thomas, ZHOU, Kai, ZILLICH, Michael, KRISTAN, Matej. An integrated system for interactive continuous learning of categorical knowledge. Journal of experimental & theoretical artificial intelligence, ISSN 0952-813X. [Print ed.], 2016, vol. 28, no. 5, str. 823-848

  • TABERNIK, Domen, LEONARDIS, Aleš, BOBEN, Marko, SKOČAJ, Danijel, KRISTAN, Matej. Adding discriminative power to a generative hierarchical compositional model using histograms of compositions. Computer vision and image understanding, ISSN 1077-3142. [Print ed.], Sep. 2015, vol. 138, str. 102-113

  • RIDGE, Barry, LEONARDIS, Aleš, UDE, Aleš, DENIŠA, Miha, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Self-supervised online learning of basic object push affordances. International journal of advanced robotic systems, ISSN 1729-8814, 2015, vol. 12, str. 24-1-24-18

  • URŠIČ, Peter, TABERNIK, Domen, BOBEN, Marko, SKOČAJ, Danijel, LEONARDIS, Aleš, KRISTAN, Matej. Room categorization based on a hierarchical representation of space. International journal of advanced robotic systems, ISSN 1729-8814, 2013, vol. 10

  • VREČKO, Alen, LEONARDIS, Aleš, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Modeling binding and cross-modal learning in Markov logic networks. Neurocomputing (Amst.). [Print ed.], 2012

  • KRISTAN, Matej, LEONARDIS, Aleš, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Multivariate online kernel density estimation with Gaussian kernels. Pattern recogn.. [Print ed.], 2011, vol. 44, no. 10/11, str. 2630-2642

  • WYATT, Jeremy L., AYDEMIR, Alper, BRENNER, Michael, HANHEIDE, Marc, HAWES, Nick, JENSFELT, Patric, KRISTAN, Matej, KRUIJFF, Geert-Jan M., LISON, Pierre, PRONOBIS, Andrzej, SJÖÖ, Kristoffer, VREČKO, Alen, ZENDER, Hendrik, ZILLICH, Michael, SKOČAJ, Danijel. Self-understanding and self-extension : a systems and representational approach. IEEE trans. auton. ment. dev. (Print). [Print ed.], Dec. 2010, vol. 2, no. 4, str. 282-303

  • KRISTAN, Matej, SKOČAJ, Danijel, LEONARDIS, Aleš. Online kernel density estimation for interactive learning. Image vis. comput.. [Print ed.], Jul. 2010, vol. 28, no. 7, str. 1106-1116

  • SKOČAJ, Danijel, LEONARDIS, Aleš. Incremental and robust learning of subspace representations. Image vis. comput.. [Print ed.], 2008, vol. 26, no. 1, str. 27-38

  • SKOČAJ, Danijel, LEONARDIS, Aleš, BISCHOF, Horst. Weighted and robust learning of subspace representations. Pattern recogn.. [Print ed.], May 2007, vol. 40, no. 5, str. [1556]-1569

  • FIDLER, Sanja, SKOČAJ, Danijel, LEONARDIS, Aleš. Combining reconstructive and discriminative subspace methods for robust classification and regression by subsampling. IEEE trans. pattern anal. mach. intell., Mar. 2006, vol. 28, no. 3, str. 337-350. 

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