Log in

The BIP took place in the framework of the InCities project. Students had  several online meetings from the end of October 2024 to mid-January 2025, and at the end of the activitiy they met together at our partner university ISCTE in Lisbon. 

Student Sofia shared her experience:

I am honoured to have been able to participate in the InCITIES - BIP Erasmus+ project entitled Cities Futures - Interdisciplinary Challenges, thanks to the Pioneer Alliance. It is an experience that gives a lot to a person. I am glad that together with other students from FRI, from different study programmes, we focused on different issues during the online part of this project, learned new things, but also looked at quite familiar knowledge from a new point of view. For me personally, the opportunity to meet new people is one of the most important aspects, and that is why I am glad that besides the "Fritzers" I met an architecture student from STU, Majka Vlcekova, who completed the spectrum of students from Slovakia. I also met many great people from Finland, specifically from Laurea University of Applied Sciences, and also from France, from Gustave Eiffel University. In the fourth week of this year we travelled to the capital of Portugal - Lisbon, where after several weeks of online lectures we finally met face to face at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE). The city is beautiful and there were plenty of opportunities to explore. In addition to the joint activities within the university, I was thrilled by the Oceanárium and the Museu Nacional do Azulejo - a tile museum. I was very pleased that the teaching at BIP combined theory with practice. The projects that we have developed in the BIP can have a real application, which I believe pleases every participant. We visited the partners of this project directly in Lisbon, who shared their experiences with us and were interested in our opinions and suggestions that could help them to improve. As an example, I will mention the Inovar Autismo Centre for Autistic Individuals, which helps with inclusivity towards a better quality of life and even independence. We also visited Audax-ISCTE, an organisation that acts as an incubator for start-ups. Here, already successful entrepreneurs shared their stories with us and gave us information about their projects. In addition to visiting the partners of this program, we also enjoyed sightseeing, which showed us that education does not only have to take place in lecture halls, but also in everyday life outside the comfort zone. I must not forget to add that communicating in English and the whole language aspect of this project is another valuable experience. It is difficult to summarize all the benefits of this project in a few paragraphs. For anyone who is hesitating to try Erasmus, I would like to give courage with this article. Whether such a short, combined programme or a full-semester mobility, both will broaden your horizons. Erasmus is an irreplaceable experience that I can only recommend. In conclusion, I would like to highlight that I appreciate this opportunity, because in the sequence of current events, I really realise the importance of freedom, Slovakia's membership in the EU and what a great opportunity Erasmus is. We must not forget that freedom is not a given, and the opportunity to travel, to experience new countries and cultures is a great example of this.

From 16 to 18 December 2024, the Erasmus+ SuMoS project kick-off meeting, fully titled Strengthening the ecosystem for sustainable student mobility, was held, organized by the project coordinator, the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics. The meeting was held in a hybrid format – live at FOI and online, and was led by the project coordinator, Assoc. Prof. Katarina Pažur Aničić, Ph.D.

The Erasmus+ SuMoS project has a total value of 400,000.00 euros, is implemented with the co-financing of the European Union, as part of the KA220 Collaborative Partnerships in the Field of Higher Education call, and its duration is 3 years (01.10.2024. – 30.09.2027.). In the aforementioned category, this project proposal was awarded the highest number of points and was the only one awarded in that amount in Croatia.

The kick-off meeting of the project was attended by members of all partners coming from 5 European countries. The coordinator of the project is the University of Zagreb Faculty of Organization and Informatics, and the partners are ESIEA - Graduate Engineering School from France, the University of Maribor, the Faculty of Organizational Sciences from Kranj from Slovenia, the University of Žilina, the Faculty of Management and Informatics from Slovakia and the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences from Belgrade from Serbia.

On the first day of the meeting, bilateral meetings were held with representatives of project partner teams from Slovakia and France, on the second day a meeting was held with all partners on the project, while on the third day there were meetings of the project management body and bilateral meetings with partners from Slovenia and Serbia. In addition to partner meetings, a coordination meeting of the team working on the development of the institutional student mobility ecosystem was held. The Erasmus+ project SuMoS consists of 5 work packages, and the goal of the project is to strengthen the institutional ecosystem for strategic, structured and sustainable cooperation between higher education institutions in the field of student mobility through the development and purposeful use of green practices, digital tools and curriculum comparison approaches.

The expected results of the SuMoS project are:

• Recommendations for the further development of the institutional ecosystem of student mobility that includes green and sustainable practices, along with the development of an innovative digital solution to raise students' awareness of their ecological footprint
• Recommendations for the comparison of courses and curricula at partner institutions, and the development of a course quality label, supported by the innovative solution of the Balanced Learning Design Planning tool (https://learning-design.eu/) developed as part of other FOI projects (RAPIDE : https://rapide-project.eu/, iLED: https://iled-project.eu/, TRUELA: https://lalab.foi.hr/truela)
• Designed, tested and validated innovative platform supported by artificial intelligence to support student mobility

The project coordinator and head of the UNIZG FOI team, Assoc. prof. Katarina Pažur Aničić, Ph.D., said: “At FOI, we are well aware that student mobility is one of the aspects of student life that greatly contributes to the personal and career development of students, and consequently to positive changes in society. Therefore, with the SuMoS project, we want to further strengthen the existing cooperation between partner institutions in in the field of student mobility through the development of solutions based on green and innovative practices, including the potential of artificial intelligence, covering all elements of the student mobility ecosystem. However, the aim is for the project results to be widely applicable and accessible to other higher education institutions to strengthen their capacities for improving and increasing student mobility, in order to ultimately contribute to the achievement of goals of increasing the number of students with mobility experience at national and EU level.“

More information about the project and project activities can be found on the official SuMoS project website.

We warmly congratulate our colleague prof. Mgr. Ivan Cimrák, Ph.D. from the Department of Software Technologies on receiving the prestigious award - Science and Technology Prize 2024 in the category of Personality of Science and Technology for his contribution in modelling and computer simulations of cancer cells leading to their separation and for the development of artificial intelligence models in mammography.

The award was presented to him on 15 November at a gala evening held in the Winter Riding Hall of Bratislava Castle. The Science and Technology Award pays tribute to all those who have dedicated their lives to scientific and technological research and who push the boundaries of knowledge with their work, which is also their mission.

The Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic (MŠVVaŠ SR) is the announcer of the award, whose mission is to raise the profile of outstanding achievements in the field of science and research, as well as the work of the scientists themselves. The organiser of the event is the Centre for Scientific and Technical Information of the Slovak Republic (CVTI SR).

More about the scientific research activities of prof. Mgr. Ivan Cimrák, Dr. you can read in the following article. We congratulate Ivan once again and wish him many more successes in his research and in building his own scientific school at the faculty.

On 15 Otcober our faculty international office organized an event Erasmus+ Café. It was a warm welcome of our foreign students who have come to spend winter semester studying at our faculty. At the beginning we gave them the matriculation letters. Then they all presented their home universities. We have students from the University of Gustave Eiffel and IMT Atlantique in France, University of Jyväskylä in Finland, Universitat de les Illes Balears in Spain, University of Porto a ISCTE Lisboa in Portugal and IIT University in Kazakhstan. Our student Paulína Šebeňova presented her study mobility at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, sharing lots of useful facts and intersting experience. After the oficial part there was an opportunity for non-formal discussions while having coffee and some light refreshments. 

From September 5 to 6, 2024, the final meeting of the "Object Oriented Programming for Fun" (OOP4FUN) project took place in Serbia, hosted by partner institutions. Representatives from the Faculty of Management Science and Informatics (FRI), Mr Peter Márton, Mr Michal Varga, Mr Michal Mrena and Mrs Brita Kiklošová, participated in the event.

The first part of the meeting was held at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FON), the University of Belgrade, where partners were introduced to the Faculty’s contributions to the project. In attendance were project managers from the University of Zagreb (Croatia) - Faculty of Organisation and Informatics (FOI), along with partners from the Považská Bystrica Business Academy (Slovakia), Srednja škola Ivanec (Croatia), University of Pardubice (Czech Republic) – Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (FEI), and Gimnazija Ivanjica (Serbia).

The second part of the meeting took place at Gimnazija Ivanjica, the host institution for this concluding session. During this time, the school shared insights into its work and plans for incorporating project outcomes into future educational activities.

The final session was held in Zlatibor, where additional project partners, including those from the University of Applied Sciences HTW Dresden (Germany) and Gymnasium Dresden-Plauen (Germany), joined in hybrid form, Mr. Zlatko Stapić from FOI. Key topics of discussion included the review of project results (PR1-PR5), final project activities, and the organization of dissemination efforts. The event concluded with an informal gathering and excursion for all participants.