Marinka Žitnik
One of the more promising young women scientists working in the field of machine learning, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. She is a former student of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana. Currently she lives and works in the USA.
Dr Marinka Žitnik is currently a post-doctoral student at Stanford University in California. Her main research field is statistical analysis of extensive and heterogeneous data. She developed new approaches to machine learning, statistical and network methods, which enable an understanding of the structure and working of large complex systems, especially those connected to biomedicine. The predictions of her algorithms have contributed directly to the planning of experiments in biology labs and to new discoveries in biology.
She started her career at an early age, when she achieved outstanding results as a student. She has a double degree in computing and mathematics. She was the best student at the Ljubljana Faculty of Computer and Information Science and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, with an average grade of full tens, she received a student Prešeren Prize for her thesis, completed her doctorate early and was ranked among the finalists for a Google scholarship. During her studies she spent time at the University of Toronto, Imperial College London, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and at Stanford University. She has also published 46 scientific papers.