Petra Škaberna
"Working from Croatia for the whole world and being the best in the world in what you do" is the key vision of the dean, prof. Vedran Bilas, PhD, which he spoke about in the middle of August 2024 on the Croatian National Television.
Dean Bilas believes that we should brand Croatian universities, institutes, high-tech ecosystems and position them more strongly internationally, just as we do for Croatia in the context of a tourist destination.
"We need to put Croatia on the map of the European Union as a high-tech destination. We already have numerous positive examples from our classic industry, which has been operating for decades, but there are more and more examples of young successful Croatian technological companies , whether in the field of artificial intelligence , information technology, robotics, electromobility ..." Bilas points out, and faculties, universities and scientific institutes form the inevitable core of this potential.
In order to better integrate into the European research area and raise the international visibility of Croatian science, it is important to participate in highly competitive Horizon projects .
"Currently, FER is the best-positioned Croatian institution in terms of the number of Horizon projects , we have a total of 17 contracted, with a total value of around 8.5 million euros", said Dean Bilas.
Speaking of internationalization, he believes that we cannot develop the Croatian high-tech industry with the base of students we currently have. And therefore, the message of the academic community is clear: Croatian universities must be internationalized.
The recording of the interview is available on our YouTube channel (in Croatian).