On the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Computer and Information Science Day on 4 December 2019 we presented awards for the most successful students and employees and honoured the other achievements of the past year.

The award recipients, invited guests and students and staff present were first greeted by the Dean, Assoc. Prof. Dr Mojca Ciglarič, who noted the symbolic significance of the fact that the Faculty’s celebratory event was taking place one day after marking the centenary of the University of Ljubljana: “Computer and information science is one of the principal building blocks of the future. We are the future.”

Students who in the past year had performed best in completing their course requirements received the prize of a book entitled “How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems”, written by the author of the comic strips Xkcd, Randall Munroe.

In the professional study programme in Computer and Information Science, prizes were awarded to:

• 1st year: Simon Bele;
• 2nd year: Dominik Bečaj, Anže Luzar;
• 3rd year: Julijan Jug.

 
In the academic higher education programme Computer and Information Science, prizes were awarded to:

• 1st year: Domen Mohorčič, Larsen Cundrič;
• 2nd year: Benjamin Džubur, Boris Radovič;
• 3rd year: Timotej Knez, David Nabergoj.

 
In the master’s degree programme Computer and Information Science, prizes were awarded to:

• 1st year: Matej Kristan, Peter Mlakar;
• 2nd year: Rok Šolar.

 
In the interdisciplinary academic higher education programme Computer Science and Mathematics, prizes were awarded to:

• 1st year: Tim Poštuvan, Marko Hostnik;
• 2nd year: Anej Svete, Domen Vreš, Klara Drofenik;
• 3rd year: Blaž Rojc.
   

In the second-cycle interdisciplinary master’s programme in Multimedia, a prize was awarded to:
1st year: Uroš Zoretič.
 

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

• David Nabergoj for work entitled Automatic measurement of the length of ski jumps using deep neural networks (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Matjaž Kukar).
• Kristian Žarn for work entitled Construction of 3D models of objects from colour images by planning the best next view (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Danijel Skočaj).

 
Student Gregor Pavlin Poličar received a University Prešeren Prize for his work entitled Adding cases to the reference insert t-SNE eliminates the differences between various data sources (mentor: Prof. Dr Blaž Zupan).
 

Recognition for successful teaching work in the 2018/2019 academic year, awarded to educators with the best scores from students, was received by:

• Prof. Dr Janez Demšar,
• Assist. Dr Matjaž Pančur.

 
The president of the FRI Student Council, Arne Simonič, presented the Student Council awards for Top Professor and Top Assistant to:

• Asst. Prof. Dr Dejan Lavbič, Top Professor (Computer and Information Science, academic),
• Asst. Prof. Dr Luka Fürst, Top Assistant (Computer and Information Science, academic),
• Prof. Dr Janez Demšar, Top Professor (Computer and Information Science, higher education),
• Senior Lecturer Dr Igor Rožanc, Top Assistant (Computer and Information Science, higher education),
• Prof. Dr Zoran Bosnić, Top Professor (Computer and Information Science, master’s),
• Assistant Žiga Emeršič, Top Assistant (Computer and Information Science, master’s).
   

Special recognition and prizes were awarded to the following postgraduate students for their research:

• Alan Lukežič for presenting papers at three important computer conferences on computer vision, specifically CDTB: A Color and Depth Visual Object Tracking Dataset and Benchmark at the ICCB 2019 conference, FuCoLoT - A Fully-Correlational Long-Term Tracker at the ACCV 2018 conference, and Object Tracking by Reconstruction with View-Specific Discriminative Correlation Filters at the CVPR 2019 conference (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Matej Kristan).
• Gregor Pirš for his article entitled Bayesian combination of probabilistic classifiers using multivariate normal mixtures, published in the Journal of Machine Learning Research (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Erik Štrumbelj).
• Polona Štefanič for articles entitled SWITCH workbench: A novel approach for the development and deployment of time-critical microservice-based cloud-native applications, and Support for full life cycle cloud-native application management: Dynamic TOSCA and SWITCH IDE, published in the journal Future Generation Computer Systems (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Vlado Stankovski).
• Borja Bovcon for the paper entitled The MaSTr1325 dataset for training deep USV obstacle detection models, published at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (mentor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Matej Kristan).

 
Special recognition for extraordinary research achievements, re-introduced this year with the aim of rewarding FRI staff, and not just postgraduate students, went to:

• Assoc. Prof. Dr Danijel Skočaj and Domen Tabernik for the article Deep Learning For Large Scale Traffic Sign Detection And Recognition, published in the journal IEEE Transactions On Intelligent Transportation Systems.

 
A special commendation for work with the business sector was presented to Prof. Dr Marko Bajec, for successful knowledge transfer to the market and linking the faculty with companies.
 

The Dean’s award for work in a professional department was presented to Maja Kerkez for her committed work in the Dean’s Office and her concern for a positive atmosphere at the faculty.
 

Special commendations for promoting the faculty and computer science were received by Assist. Prof. Dr Luka Fürst and Assistant Dr Marko Poženel, for spreading enthusiasm for computer science at FRI Summer School workshops and in the Programming Week.

We also presented all the recipients of university prizes which the Rector awards during the University Week:

• Golden Plaque: Prof. Dr Zoran Bosnić,
• Golden Plaque for group: Bioinformatics Laboratory (for Orange),
• Special commendation for young higher education teachers and staff: Asst. Prof Dr Slavko Žitnik,
• title of Professor Emeritus: Prof. Dr Nežka Mramor Kosta,
• University Prešeren Prize: Gregor Pavlin Poličar,
• Special commendation for students with the best academic achievements: Luka Kolar,
• Award for special achievements by students: Aljaž Švigelj, Gregor Robert Krmelj and Miha Hribar (for the Lia game and tournament),
• Professional staff award: Vesna Gračner, head of the FRI International Office.

 
At the event a musical or sound interlude was provided by the musical artist Miha Ciglar, founder of the Institute for Research of Sound Art, who works at the place where art intersects with technology. He presented an innovative loudspeaker, which allows him to almost literally get hold of sound and shape it with his hands or to guide it out into the space.
 

Photographs are published in the Facebook gallery (photos by: Andrej Križ).

Sincere congratulations once again to all the recipients!