The third award ceremony of dr. Uroš Seljak for the Best Scientific Publications

Prizes and commendations were awarded to dr. Uroš Seljak for the best scientific members of first- and second-year students in Slovenia for the year 2024. The purpose of the award is to encourage scientific publications by students and greater involvement in research work. The UL and ASEF announce the call for awards every academic year.

Prof. dr. Uroš Seljak, professor at the Department of Physics at the University of California, UC Berkeley, UL alumnus and ASEF mentor, received the prestigious Yale University Gruber Foundation Award in 2021 for his outstanding contribution to research in cosmology. With his part of the prize, he established a prize fund for first- and second-year students, which supports the best scientific publications of Slovenian students. With this prof. dr. Seljak not only encourages the outstanding achievements of young researchers, but also strengthens the bond between the Slovenian scientific diaspora and the domestic research environment.

This year prof. dr. Uroš Seljak attended the ceremony and stated the following:

“I am glad that the word about the award has spread and that we receive more quality applications every year. At the same time, this embarrasses us, as the prize is limited to only three recipients. We solved the Solomonic dilemma; by giving commendations as well. I congratulate all award winners and recipients of commendations and wish them much success in the future.”

This year’s prizes for the best scientific publications were awarded to:

Manca Lunder from the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Ljubljana for her article entitled Cold atmospheric plasma for surface disinfection: a promising weapon against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus biofilms (mentor prof. dr. Rok Fink)

Jer Pelhan for University of Computer and Information Science of the University of Ljubljana for his article DAVE – A Detect-and-Verify Paradigm for Low-Shot Counting (mentor Dr. Matej Kristan) and

Zala Korenjak from the “Jožef Stefan” Institute for the article Smectic and Soap Bubble Optofluidic Lasers (mentor Assoc. Dr. Matjaž Humar).

Zala Korenjak about the award:

“I am very happy about the awarded award. It is an additional confirmation of my work, but above all an incentive and motivation for further research. In the award-winning work, we were the first to show that such a simple object as a soap bubble can act as a source In addition, its properties are used as an extremely accurate sensor of various quantities.“

In addition, four commendations were awarded for scientific publications: Marta Leban for the article Determination of linearized pDNA template in mRNA production process using HPLC (mentor assistant professor Jurij Trontelj), Ema Mlinar for the article Determining the cosmological growth parameter for a stellar mass black hole (mentor prof. dr. Tomaž Zwitter), Anja Neža Šmid for the article entitled Effects of Oral Iron Supplementation on Blood Iron Status in Athletes: A Systematic Review, Meta‑ Analysis and Meta-Regression of Randomized Controlled Trials (mentor dr. Petra Golja), and Valentin Vogrinčič for the article entitled Phytosulfokine alpha accelerates the regeneration of transformed and non-transformed protoplasts of Brassica oleracea (mentor assoc. prof. Jana Murovec).

Congratulations to all the awarded!