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Organizers

CURRENT ORGANIZERS:

Kristina Majsec
(S³ camp)

Matija Piskorec
(S³ camp)

Marko Kosicek
(S³++ camp)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Branimir Lukic

Martina Mijuskovic

ON-SITE COORDINATOR:

Korado Korlevic

TECHNICAL ASSISTANTS:

Filip Sklebar (S3 2011)

Luka Opasic (S3++ 2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FORMER ORGANIZERS:

Branko Durdevic (S3 2007, S3 2010)	Fran Supek (S3++ 2009)	Andjela Saric (S3 2008)	Nino Antulov-Fantulin (S3 2008)
Anamarija Stafa (S3++ 2010)	Tomislav Kokotovic (S3 2009)	Nenad Katanic (S3 2009)

 

 

KRISTINA MAJSEC

Kristina chose a career in science in order to fulfill a childhood dream - to contribute something important to the world. She developed an interest in math and chemistry very early, which led her to win the state chemistry championship in 2001. To further pursue this love for science of living systems, she decided to study molecular biology at the University of Zagreb. During her studies, she was interested in various problems. Among others, she has worked on characterizing potential chemotherapeutics for cervical cancer cells and abiotic plant stress response, while her work on archeal tRNA was honored with Rector's award in 2008. Currently she is a doctoral student of biology at the University of Zagreb, working on phytoremediation: creating plants that clean the soil from toxic metals.

As she learned about the amazing world of science, Kristina wanted to share it with others. She first came to the Summer School of Science in 2008, as a Swapshop leader, upon encouragement of her friend Petra Pusic. People at the School, all devoted to science and education, made her feel like she found the place where she belongs. It was the place with great atmosphere of optimism and progress, where her passion for knowledge and striving for excellence were best understood. This is why the Summer School of Science became her new home and she kept coming back as a lecturer and a project leader.

Kristina is also very interested in languages and is currently studying French and Spanish. She is amazed with mathematical regularity of language constructions and how people express the same emotions, needs and attitudes differently in different languages; how we are all so alike and so different at the same time. Because of her fascination with the impact of written word, she wrote for a biology student magazine In Vivo, and is presently exploring her interest in creative writing.

MATIJA PISKOREC

Matija became interested in science after reading James Gleick‘s "Chaos: Making a New Science", while he was a high school student in Bjelovar (Croatia). He decided to implement the formulas for creating beautiful fractal pictures in Pascal programming language and wrote the program in his notebook during lectures. After doing a seminar on nondeterministic chaos for his high school thesis he decided that computer science is a thing for him.

He was introduced to the Summer School of Science in 2008 by Nino Antulov-Fantulin - one of the organizers at the time. The same year he came to the School to lead a computer science project on complex networks. He loved the idea that high school students, university students and senior scientists come together to learn from each other and have fun. He returned to the School the next year to lead a workshop on camera obscura and analog photography.

Matija graduated computer science on the University of Zagreb in 2010. He is currently working at the Max F. Perutz Laboratory in Vienna, Austria. During his education his main research interests were in the field of bioinformatics and complex systems because they employ computer science methods to explore very different phenomena from nature and society. From 2006 he participates regularly in British Parliamentary Debate tournaments in Croatia and abroad. Since 2007 he is a member of photo club in KSET (Club of Students of Electrical Engineering) with digital image manipulation and pinhole camera photography being his main preoccupation. His photographs can be found on http://galerija.kset.org.

MARKO KOSICEK

In addition to chemistry, Marko’s passion is science communication and popularization. He is actively involved in Zagreb Science Festival (Science Fair) since 2007 as a lecturer and workshop leader. He participated as an invited speaker in other Science Festivals (Novi Sad, Athens, Sinj) as well. In 2008, Marko won Croatian and International FameLab competition (Cheltenham, UK), a competition in 3 minute oral presentations on scientific topics without any slides. His winning presentation “Biochemistry of love” attracted media and resulted with more than 40 interviews for national and foreign TVs, newspapers and radio stations.

Marko is also active in education. Since 2005, he is preparing young Croatian representatives for International Chemistry Olympiad. He first came to the Summer School of Science in 2007, on suggestion of his friend, Tomislav Kokotovic. He enjoyed working with talented and motivated high school students and was fascinated with how much one can do in an improvised lab without sophisticated equipment. He kept coming back to the School, first as a mentor and, in 2009 and 2010, as an organizer.

BRANIMIR LUKIC

Branimir got interested in science after reading Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" while still attending high-school in Pozega (Croatia). His initial interest in astronomy led him to study physics in Zagreb, followed by a PhD at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. His research focused on mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes and hydrodynamic memory effects in Brownian motion, resulting in several papers in top discipline journals. After his PhD, he did postdoctoral research at French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris.

During graduate school, Branimir was active in the Croatian Society for Public Understanding of Science (znanost.org), where he developed “Connect”, an on-line network of Croatian scientists in Croatia and abroad. His work enabled Croatian scientific community to actively participate in country's science policymaking.

Branimir first came to Visnjan in 1997, as a participant of the Summer School of Astronomy. He fell in love with the spirit of the place, returning regularly to recharge his batteries with enthusiasm and inspiration and to create new friendships. He was involved in the Summer School of Science since its inception in 2001, serving a number of different roles. As a School organizer since 2004, he made a series of crucial contributions to the development of the School, including conceptual design of the scientific program. He now serves as a member of the Organizing Committee and is working on School’s long term development.

Since September 2010, Branimir is employed as a physics teacher in Technical High School in Pozega, Croatia. Concurrently with work, he is studying theory of instruction at the University of Zagreb and preparing for the teacher's state exam.

MARTINA MIJUSKOVIC

While she was an undergraduate student at the University of Zagreb, Martina was active in the Biology Student Association (BIUS), where together with her colleagues she organized biology journal clubs and a first bioinformatics course at the university. After graduation, she moved to ETH Zurich (Switzerland) to do her Ph.D. Her work focused on a general transcription factor TFIID, a large protein complex necessary for gene transcription.

In 2003, during her graduate studies, Martina was introduced to the Summer School of Science by her friend Branimir Lukic. Excited and inspired by the creative atmosphere at the School, she decided to come back as a project leader and, in 2005, as the school organizer. Together with Branimir Lukic, she enjoyed the creative process of designing the scientific program and laying down the plans for School’s future growth. That included conceptualizing and finally implementing the expansion of Summer School of Science to two camps: S³ and S³++. Since 2009, Martina serves as a member of the Summer School of Science Organizing Committee and is focused on School’s long-term development.

Martina currently lives in New York, where she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the NYU School of Medicine. In addition to exploring the City’s rich cultural scene, she spends a lot of time in New York's dance studios, aiming to train to the professional level. She is also active as a TED translator and hopes to visit the TED conference one day to talk about her work in education.

KORADO KORLEVIC

His scientific interests led him first to an expedition in Tunguska (Russia), where he explored the asteroid impact craters. Motivated by the possibility of asteroid collisions with the Earth, he started asteroid monitoring at the Visnjan Observatory- work that resulted in the discovery of more than 1400 asteroids and two comets that bear his name. Visnjan Observatory is placed among world’s twelve most productive Observatories of all times.

Korado continues to be active in science education and asteroid astronomy. Among his current projects are the creation of new the observatory in a near-by village Tican and the establishment of the new Science and Education Center Visnjan that cooperates internationally through the Network of Youth Excellence. In 2005, he initiated a new national science competition, VIP EUREKA, based on experimental research performed by high-school students. He provided crucial organizing support (fundraising and on-site coordination) for the Summer School of Science since it’s beginning, in 2001. He is still active as a mentor at the Visnjan School of Astronomy.

LUKA OPASIC

Luka, a second year student of medicine at the University of Zagreb, has been a participant at the Summer School of Science in 2007, 2008 and 2009. To give back for everything he received in those three years, and to forward it on to a younger generation, he volunteered as a Swapshop leader in 2010, and now as a technical assistant.

On S3++ 2008 Luka was introduced to marine biology, which led him to continue to work in the field of reproductive marine zoology. Currently, he is interested in stem cells and is beginning his work on regeneration of brain after stroke by using neural stem cells.

Other than medicine, which takes up nearly all his time, he plays guitar in Blues Train band, scuba dives during summer and works on developing his creativity through ideas and art.

BRANKO DURDEVIC

Branko has been on the Summer School of Science since 2004, first as s participant. He immediately fell in love with the atmosphere there. What he loved the most was the fact that he finally found a place where he could meet people of similar interests and where he could ask all the questions he always wanted to ask. He has been coming back ever since, either as a technical assistant, project leader or school organizer. The School also went along with his interest in education, especially because he feels that regular schools usually don’t promote critical thinking and creativity so he wants to help change that.

Branko also has a strong interest in music and he likes to sing. He is a member of the Student Section of Croatian Physical Society Choir. Eventually, he would like to go a music school to explore this interest further.

FRAN SUPEK

Ever since his early childhood, Fran was drawn to the natural world. His curiosity was ignited by walks through nature his grandfather took him to, while telling him stories about the medicinal properties of plants, how songs of different birds sounded, or why moss grew on north side of trees.  This interest was rivaled only by the arrival of his first computer, a Commodore 64, and a book that described how to make it do mostly useless but fun things using the BASIC programming language.  With his focus shifting between biology and computers, Fran finally decided to study molecular biology. He graduated at the University of Zagreb with a diploma in bioinformatics, a young and exciting discipline at the time.

Fran recently got his PhD degree with a thesis in comparative genomics of bacteria, researching this field at the Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Zagreb, Croatia. In addition to working as the only biologist in an artificial intelligence lab full of computer scientists, Fran also collaborated on various research subjects together with medical doctors, organic chemists and cancer biologists. Fran now works as a Marie Curie postdoc at the Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain (see full CV).

Believing that scientists are responsible for communicating the significance of their research to the general public, Fran has frequently worked with the local and national newspapers, radio and TV stations to further the goal of popularizing science. In 2007, he won the FameLab Croatia competition in short scientific presentations with a talk about protein folding.

Fran was introduced to the Summer School of Science by his long time colleague and friend, Martina Mijuskovic, who persuaded him to be a project leader in 2007. Realizing how nice it would have been if such a school existed at the time when he was a high school student, he has gladly returned to the School ever since, contributing either as a lecturer, project leader or the School organizer. Even after having been there several times, Fran is still amazed by the enthusiasm for science shared between the students and the group leaders at the Summer School of Science.

ANDELA SARIC

Andela's affair with natural sciences began under the influence of her father, a medical doctor. As a child she was amazed with biology and the human body. Growing up, her interests moved to more fundamental sciences: chemistry and physics. To her, the idea that by performing a chemical reaction in a flask you actually recombine atoms and create completely new organizations was utterly appealing. Chemistry gave her the feeling of unlimited creativity, while physics added the rationality and control. Today, Andela is becoming an expert in chemical physics.

During her stimulating high school education, Andela took part in different national scientific competitions and in the International Chemistry Olympiads, winning a bronze medal. She started her research career in theoretical chemistry still while majoring chemistry at the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb. This encouraged her to move to New York to do her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Currently, she is working on understanding physics of various soft material systems, including artificial/biological membranes and synthetic/biopolymers.

Seeing teaching as a great way to keep her own motivation and love for science, Andela has worked with a number of young science enthusiasts. She helped preparing the national chemistry olympic team, partook in Zagreb Science Festival, and has worked as a teaching assistant at Columbia University.

Andela first came to Summer School of Science in 2005, as a workshop leader. Like most of the people who visit the school, she fell in love with the atmosphere, informal way of gaining knowledge and the lovely people. She keeps coming back, and has participated in the School as a project leader, lecturer or organizer ever since. Andela sees the School as a great polygon for assisting young minds to find their way and is interested in taking part in the School's development. Her goal is to enable participation to every interested student, regardless of the educational or economical background.

NINO ANTULOV-FANTULIN

At the age of twelve Nino became fascinated by astronomy and joined local astronomy club „Gea-X“ Slavonski Brod (Croatia). Experimental projects he worked on there gave him a chance to learn about the scientific method and to get a closer insight into Universe. Later, as a high school student, he fell in love with computer programming. After writing his first programs (one for data encryption called „Word Crypt“ and another for epidemic simulations called „Burning Virus“), he decided to study computer science.

Nino finished undergraduate and graduate study of computer science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb. Currently, Nino is working as a research assistant on e-LICO (e-Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research in Data Mining and Data-Intensive Science) project at Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia.  He is also a first year PhD student in Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb. Nino's main research activities are in field of complex networks (epidemic models and simulations), machine learning, data mining and bioinformatics (protein docking).

Nino was a participant at the Summer School of Science in 2004 and 2005, where he got his first opportunity to work on real scientific projects in computer science. He wanted to give chance to others to experience science as he did at the School, so he kept coming back as a workshop leader or a project leader ever since 2006 (including as an organiser in 2008). He could simply not resist the creative atmosphere at Summer School of Science.

Nino likes all kinds of sports, especially martial arts. When the sun is shining, cycling is one of his favorite ways of transportation. Recently he started to play chess in his spare time with his roommates, in their private chess club „Four horses“. Nino also likes to listen old vinyl records on the gramophone.

ANAMARIJA STAFA

Being a teaching assistant on student practicals at University of Zagreb, Anamarija is actively involved in higher education. In 2007 she also held a workshop on yeast at the Summer Science Factory, a summer program for elementary and high school students at the  Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences in Split, Croatia.

She was invited to the Summer School of Science in 2009 by her friend, Fran Supek. At S3++ camp, she led a project that focused on molecular genetics and toxicology. She was impressed by the strong motivation and hard work of her students, as well as the interaction between project leaders and organizers. She decided to return to Visnjan next summer and enthusiastically accepted an invitation to be a co-organiser of S³++ camp in 2010.

TOMISLAV KOKOTOVIC

Tomislav fell in love with chemistry under the influence of his high school chemistry teacher. Doing experiments with beautiful colours and all the other "wonders" performed in test tubes at the time teased his imagination and awoke the thirst to understand puzzles behind those experiments. This motivated him to learn more and take part in several national competitions and at the International Chemistry Olympiad where he won bronze medal. Later, interest in chemistry broadens to molecular and human biology. Interest in both people and scientific way of comprehending the world melted together for several years and resulted with a wish to become a medical doctor.
 
Currently he is a fifth year student at School of Medicine University of Zagreb. Although educated to become a physician, his interest in basic science grew exponentially with the knowledge gained in pathophysiology of diseases. Wanting to deepen insight in molecular background of different malfunctions of the organism, Tomislav joined research labs dealing with tumour biochemistry and genetics. He also won a Rektor's prize for results on investigation of the Wnt signaling pathway's role in neuroepithelial brain tumour development. The plan for the future is to connect passion in science and medicine by doing bench-to-bedside translational research.
 
Tomislav was a participant at Summer School of Science in 2004. S3 was to him a unique opportunity to have hands on experience in science and to be thought scientific method by experts of their fields. Great perspective acquired in Višnjan and stimulating high school education shaped his way of thinking about science as a field which combines knowledge and problem solving with creativity. Since learning science gave him the feeling of liberty, Tomislav wanted to transfer this idea further which motivated him to take part in different projects in science communication. In following years he came back to Višnjan to do workshops, then a project and finally to organize S3. He also took an active part in other popular science projects like Science Festival at School of Medicine and a workshop in Science Communication (collaboration of School of Medicine University of Zagreb and Ecole Normale Superiur Paris). Currently he moved to different aspect of science communication and now he is editing scientific section in medical students' journal Medicinar. A goal of this section is accenting importance of bridging basic science and medicine.
 
Extracurricular education activities like S3 are often designed with great care by enthusiasts and professionals of the field which makes these programs unique tools for developing interests, skills and motivation of each child participating. Removing boundaries of conventional education, hands on experience and visible result of their work make tangible impact on professional and personal development of young people. This is why Tomislav finds S3 and similar programs of crucial importance for development of more functional and humane society.

NENAD KATANIC

Since his very early age it was obvious that Nenad's career will have something to do with computers. As he often likes to point out, he learned his first letters from the old Commodore 64 computer keyboard. Since then he puts most of his efforts in learning and discovering the amazing world of computer science.

Nenad finished his undergraudate and gradute study in the field of Software Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, where he also recently started his PhD in Computer Science. He is also employed as a software developer in Ericsson Nikola Tesla company in Zagreb, carrying out research activities in the field of modelling high-complex telecommunication software systems. Besides current research activities within Ericsson Nenad is also involved in other software development projects. One of the important ones was during his graduate studies where he worked on an innovative project of building the advanced software system for wild animal tracking, called Wildlife Observer. This software system will soon become a primary tool for croatian veterinarian scientists involved in the tracking of endangered animal species in Croatia, especially wolves. For this project Nenad was awarded a Rector's award in 2009. A part of this project has been used as a scientific project on Summer School of Science in 2008.

Nenad's first contact with the Summer School of Science was in 2007, after the invitation from Nino Antulov-Fantulin to participate as a project leader. Abilities, motivation and thirst for knowledge of young students at the School made him realize that science and education is the path he wants to take in his life. After that first year he has become actively involved in School's activities. He participated again as a project leader in 2008 and as a school organizer in 2009.

Apart from scientific work, Nenad's love No.#1 is music and traveling. He is actively involved on Croatian punk-rock scene as a bass player in croatian punk-rock band called "Kriva Istina" (Wrong Truth). Until this day, they have played over 60 concerts around Balcan countries and published one album called "Van Okvira" (Out of frames). Through socially and politicaly oriented lyrics, his band is pointing out some of the important issues in the Croatian society.

FILIP SKLEBAR

Filip is a fourth year student at Gimnazija Bjelovar, Croatia. He has been a participant at the Summer School of Science in 2009 and 2010. To give back for everything he received in those two years he volunteered this year as a technical assistant.

On the Summer School of Science 2009 Filip was introduced to plasma physics, which led him to continue to work in the field. He participated on national competitions in physics about Kelvin water dropper, light bulb efficiency and chemistry where he designed device for measuring conductivity of solutions. Currently, he is interested in physical chemistry, electronics and experimental physics.