"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).

The third meeting of STEM teachers at FER brought together about 200 teachers of informatics, mathematics, physics, computing, professional subjects in technical schools and classroom teachers from all over Croatia. The goal of the meeting, recognized by the Agency for Education and Training (AZOO) as an official education for teachers, was to enable primary and secondary school teachers to improve their competencies through inspiring lectures and interactive workshops on a wide range of topics from the STEM field. In addition to acquiring new knowledge, teachers had the opportunity to explore the possibilities of their schools' cooperation with FER and to exchange ideas and experiences with colleagues from other parts of Croatia.

Dean of FER prof. Vedran Bilas believes that our young talents from Croatia should work for the whole world and that they do it the best in the world. Therefore, among other things, FER stands for stronger internationalization and exposure to the challenges of competitive foreign universities.

The first generation of students of the international study programe "Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree in Brain and Data Science - NeuroData" arrived to Zagreb to participate in a two-week summer school organized by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) and the Faculty of Medicine (MEF) of the University of Zagreb.

The summer school, which lasts from August 26 to September 6, this year hosted 14 top students from Italy, Germany, France, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, USA, Mexico and Brazil.

NeuroData is a study program that combines the fields of neuroscience and data science, and is implemented by a consortium of universities from six countries. The coordinator is Bar-Ilan University from Israel, and in addition to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zagreb, the partners are universities in the Netherlands (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Portugal (Universidade de Lisboa - Instituto Superior Técnico), Italy (University of Padua). and Finland (University of Jyväskylä).

N. E. Charlotte van Baak, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Republic of Croatia, visited FER on September 12 2024. The meeting was held in the dean's office where they discussed the possibilities of cooperation and joint organization of events on the topic of internationalization of higher education and mobility of students and researchers.

The hosts of the meeting were the dean of FER, prof. Vedran Bilas, PhD and associate professor Tomislav Capuder, PhD, who will assume the position of vice dean for research and innovation from October 1, 2024.

Breaking the Surface (BtS) is an international interdisciplinary field workshop on maritime robotics and its applications, organized by FER's LABUST – the Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies, for the 16th consecutive year. The event will take place from September 29 to October 6, 2024, in Biograd na Moru.

Until 2013, BtS meetings were held in Murter, from 2014 to 2022 in Biograd na Moru, and in 2023, for the first time outside Croatia, in Kumbor, Montenegro. This year, BtS returns to the Croatian coast.

More details about the workshop can be found on the official Breaking the Surface website.

The European Processor Initiative (EPI), whose goal is to achieve European independence in the field of chip technologies and high-performance computing infrastructure, proudly announces the holding of its first EPI Forum on October 9 and 10, 2024, in Barcelona.

The project brings together 27 partners from 10 European countries, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing is one of the project partners.

At the end of June 2024, the Department Department of Energy and Power Systems celebrated the 90th anniversary of its establishment, marking nine decades of outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of electric power.

At the marking ceremony, Dean Vedran Bilas emphasized the importance of the Department as one of the most vivid departments at FER, known for top scientific achievements and cooperation with industry. "Their knowledge, expertise and graduates are needed by the Croatian industry, which adequately recognized this by equipping the laboratory at the Department of Energy and Power Systems. The Department has significantly transformed itself and embraced new technologies in order to be competitive and expand the range of services it provides on the European scientific and commercial scene", Dean Bilas pointed out.

Today, the Department is the backbone of the energy transition in Croatia, educating engineers who occupy leading positions in the industry, cooperating with numerous companies and achieving notable scientific results. Their immeasurable contribution includes the construction of the Krško Nuclear Power Plant, and in recent decades they have also played an important role in the development of renewable energy sources and continue their activities in this direction.

Founded in 1934 as the Institute for High Voltage, at the then Technical Faculty, the Department has produced many prominent people throughout its rich history, including academician prof. Hrvoja Požar, Olympic winner prof. Zdravko Hebel, one of the founders of basketball in Croatia, prof. Božidar Stefanini and MEP prof. Davor Škrlec.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Zagreb (FER) is proud to announce that it has provided a significant contribution to European sovereignty, with valuable business impacts. European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) finalized the 273-M€ procurement contract for JUPITER, the first EuroHPC exascale supercomputer granted to the consortium of Eviden and ParTec. JUPITER  will be hosted at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, where the brain of the system will be based on the brand new general-purpose Rhea processors by SiPearl that have been designed in Europe with FER being one of the key partners of SiPearl in design and verification of those processors.

"FER is proud to be at the forefront of what is among the most advanced global supercomputer processor technology research and to partner with leading European industry and research organizations SiPearl, Eviden, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and others to create the first European general purpose processor for supercomputers. Partnering with SiPearl allowed us to have a unique opportunity to be able to work with great industry experts on the design and verification of what will be the family of globally one of the most advanced and powerful processors.

Also, being a member of European Processor Initiative project funded by EuroHPC JU, we team with the brightest minds, share ideas and solutions and make Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Zagreb recognized on the global research map" , said Mario Kovač, professor and Director of FER HPC research center.     

What are exascale supercomputers

Supercomputers solve problems that are significantly beyond the capacity of a single office computer/laptop, since they can process significantly larger amounts of data and make calculations in seconds that would otherwise take months or even decades. Supercomputers are built out of the most advanced components and use large and complex building blocks.

One way of describing the power of computers is by comparing how many basic operations, such as e.g. additions, they can compute in one second. Thus, the metric is given in so called FLOPS (floating point operations per second).

An "Exascale supercomputer" can perform more than billion billion or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10¹⁸) operations (FLOPS) per second, or in short more than one exaFLOPS. To put this into perspective: it would take one million typical laptops to do the same number of computations in the same amount of time.

On June 14, 2024, the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia, Nathalie Rayes, visited FER. The Ambassador delivered an inspiring lecture on her life journey and career development.

During a meeting with the dean and representatives of FER, discussions were held about opportunities and programs for mobility, as well as financial support available through the Embassy's programs. In particular, the collaboration aimed at fostering technological development in Croatia and enhancing the international visibility of FER was highlighted.

The Croatian Quantum Communication Infrastructure (CroQCI) project presentation took place on May 7, 2024, in the National and University Library hall. As the leader of the fourth Work Package of the CroQCI project, FER is responsible for the space segment of quantum communications.

The project involves a team of scientists from the Department of Communication and Space Technologies (ZKIST): Prof. Dr. Dubravko Babić as the project leader, Assist. Prof. Dr. Josip Vuković as a team member, and Assist. Prof. Dr. Josip Lončar, Bruno Skendrović, Jasna Janković, and Mate Jagnjić as technical leaders, along with Assist. Prof. Dr. Marko Horvat from the Department of Applied Computing. For the educational package within the sixth Work Package of the CroQCI project, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Saša Ilijić from the Department of Applied Physics is responsible on behalf of FER.

FERConnect, the third gathering of FER alumni, was a celebration of the global success of FER's roboticists. During the event, alumni and guests were presented with the excellent results of the FER Alumni Foundation and a new application for mentoring.

The award-winning solution of FER's roboticists, who secured first place at the prestigious international robotics competition MBZIRC in Abu Dhabi, was presented with a short documentary film, a presentation, and a panel discussion.

The mentoring application, presented by the President of the Alumni Board, Mladen Pejković, and the member of the Alumni Board Zlatka Tečec Ribarić, aims to encourage the career progress of FER graduates (alumnae) and current FER students by providing individual mentoring by experienced FER alumni, transferring key experiences and knowledge to future holders of technological development of Croatia.

The first phase of the "Light-Pollution Characterization Module" project was successfully completed in December 2023. The FER-ZKIST team handed over the module to the European Space Agency, which commended the project and recommended its continuation.

Do you know how night-time light alters life on Earth? To what extent is the increasing light pollution harming insects, animals, humans, and plants? Night-time light obscures the night sky, disrupts natural biological rhythms, affects health, leads to energy waste, hinders enjoyment of the night sky, and complicates astronomical observations. Studies indicate that artificial light illuminating the Earth has been increasing at an annual rate of 10% over the past 12 years.

The FER Alumni Foundation invites members of the Alumni community and everyone else to get involved and help FER students on their way to excellence.

More than 25,000 FER students walked the halls of the faculty, sat at the same desks, learned from the same professors, but each student, today's FER alumni, had his own path and his own story. Only the roof was always shared by everyone.

Our students come from all over Croatia, from different families, different financial opportunities and social circumstances. All of them come to FER full of enthusiasm, desire and ability to achieve - excellence!