The short film Nihče ni rekel, da te moram imeti rad (“Nobody Said I Have To Love You”) was the first student film in the history of the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television of the University of Ljubljana to be included in the Cinéfondation selection, part of the official programme of the Cannes Film Festival. This is a remarkable international success, given that a total of 1,952 works were submitted by film schools all over the world, of which the jury selected just 17 to include in the programme.  

Matjaž Jamnik has completed a degree in film and television directing. His film "Nihče ni rekel, da te moram imeti rad" scored a number of significant international festival successes in 2019 and 2020.  

Gaja Naja Rojec has completed a degree in film and television cinematography. As director of photography on "Nihče ni rekel, da te moram imeti rad", she created a convincing look for the film that perfectly complements its exquisite dramaturgy.  

Kristian Božak Kavčič has completed a bachelor’s degree in film and television editing. His well-considered editing work on "Nihče ni rekel, da te moram imeti rad" contributed significantly to our understanding of this story about family relationships.  

(Mentor for directing Prof. Miran Zupanič, Mentor for camera operating Assoc. Prof. Valentin Perko, Mentor for editing Asst. Prof. Mag. Stanko Kostanjevec)

Jernej Kapus completed a master’s degree in industrial design in 2020. Using a participatory design approach, he has collaborated with various specialised institutions to find opportunities to improve the quality of life of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His response to the challenges he perceived took the form of a carefully designed concept of smart glasses that use a built-in camera and artificial intelligence to “read” the emotions of the people with whom an individual with ASD is interacting. The proposed concept represents a remarkable contribution to the better and easier integration of people with ASD into society. It helps them with everyday communication and interactions and enables a less stressful response to environmental stimuli.

(Mentors Asst. Prof. Lidija Pritržnik and Asst. Prof. Dr. Barbara Predan)  

Tajda Klobučar first encountered stem cells and molecular biology when taking part in practical training in Germany. She is currently a doctoral student in Prof. Dr. Jernej Ule’s group at the National Institute of Chemistry. The results of her master’s thesis, prepared under the mentorship of Asst. Prof. Dr. Jernej Ogorevc and co-mentorship Dr. Simão José Teixeira da Rocha, have contributed to understanding of specific epigenetic defects that appear during the reprogramming of an adult cell into a “stem” cell and represent one of the obstacles preventing the regular use of induced pluripotent stem cells in personalised medicine.

(Mentor Asst. Prof. Dr. Jernej Ogorevc, Co-Mentor Dr. Simão José Teixeira da Rocha)  

The master’s thesis is concerned with the field of neuroeconomics. It attempts to understand the propensity for risk-taking on the basis of findings from the fields of psychology, physiology and neuroscience. Results have shown that testosterone and cortisol are positively correlated with financial risk-taking. The principal personality traits connected to risk-taking are neuroticism/anxiety and impulsiveness. The work represents an important contribution to the substantive and methodological development of the neuroeconomics field. Having completed her postgraduate studies, Urša Ferjančič is currently a junior researcher and doctoral student at the University of Ljubljana’s School of Economics and Business.  

(Mentor Prof. Dr. Aljoša Valentinčič)  

After completing her secondary education at Bitola (North Macedonia), Ana Siljanovska enrolled at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology to study chemistry. She graduated in 2018 and went on to complete a master’s degree in 2020 under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Janez Košmrlj. Alongside her studies, she was actively involved in various extracurricular activities on the Student Council and in the faculty choir. Her research covers the synthesis of stable diazonium salts as precursors of azo dyes and cinnolines. By combining some of the latest techniques of experimental and theoretical chemistry, she has successfully demonstrated a new mechanism for the synthesis of cinnolines.

(Mentor Prof. Dr. Janez Košmrlj)  

Daniel Vitas enrolled in the mathematics programme at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in 2017 and achieved a grade of 10 in all his first-cycle examinations. He graduated in the summer of 2020 and is now continuing his studies at the postgraduate level. In his bachelor’s thesis, which he completed under the mentroship of Prof. Dr. Matej Brešar, he proved the theorem that nontrivial multilinear polynomials are surjective on algebras with surjective inner derivation. One of the consequences of the theorem is a solution to the infinite-dimensional version of the famous L’vov-Kaplansky conjecture. He subsequently turned his bachelor’s thesis into a stand-alone paper that has been published in the Journal of Algebra, a leading publication in the field. 

(Mentor Prof. Dr. Matej Brešar)  

After graduating from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Ljubljana (UL), Jaka Šircelj completed a master’s degree at the UL Faculty of Computer and Information Science (UL FRI) under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj. He is currently employed as a researcher at UL FRI and the UL Faculty of Electrical Engineering. In his award-winning master’s thesis he considered the problem of adversarial examples in the field of deep learning. He developed a methodology for experimental evaluation involving the introduction of accuracy-perturbation curves and, by analysing a large number of experiments, systematically compared various methods for generating adversarial examples and methods of defence against them.

(Mentor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijel Skočaj)

Jakob Rogelj completed a master’s degree at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in October 2019. The award-winning thesis entitled Dynamic characterisation of joints in the finger-hand biodynamic system, prepared under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gregor Čepon and co-mentorship of Prof. Dr. Miha Boltežar, is an important contribution to understanding the problem of vibration illnesses. The thesis presents the development of a model of the human finger and a novel approach based on the development of a dynamic model in the context of the dynamics of a system of rigid bodies. The breadth of the thesis is reflected in an interdisciplinary approach that combines the fields of biodynamics, classical mechanics and anatomy.

(Mentor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gregor Čepon, Co-Mentor Prof. Dr. Miha Boltežar)

Domen Svetlin holds a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture and a master’s degree in geography and has numerous interests and a wide range of expertise, both in terms of formal education and in other fields. His master’s thesis entitled An analysis of temperature conditions in frost hollows on the Komna plateau, written under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Matej Ogrin, is a comprehensive and thorough work, and at the same time an innovative illustration of temperature conditions in frost hollows. It contains an important methodological and substantive advance of geographical science in the field of mountain climate and the climatology of frost hollows and brings important new findings to the fields of mountain climatology, the geography of mountains and biogeography.

(Mentor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Matej Ogrin)  

Lara Gea Vurnik Navinšek holds a bachelor’s degree in South Slavic studies and a master’s degree in comparative literature. She completed the former at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts in 2016. She received her master’s degree in 2019 with the award-winning thesis Western esotericism in the works of W. B. Yeats and Fernando Pessoa, in which she examines how esotericism, which established itself in the nineteenth century as a bridge between religion and science, thus becoming the third pillar of Western culture, influenced two of the classic figures of European poetic modernism. The thesis is of pioneering importance in the comparative literature field in Slovenia.

(Mentor Prof. Dr. Vid Snoj)  

Špela Krek has completed a master’s degree in primary school teaching at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Education. Her master’s thesis on the Slovene communication skills of fourth-year students at a bilingual primary school in Carinthia (Austria) covers a topic with a significant ethnic dimension, namely knowledge of the Slovene language among students at bilingual primary schools. She prepared the thesis under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Marja Bešter Turk and co-mentorship of Tch. Asst. Dr.  Alenka Rot Vrhovec.

(Mentor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Marja Bešter Turk, Co-Mentor Tch. Asst. Dr. Alenka Rot Vrhovec)  

Sabina Drofenik completed a bachelor’s degree in veterinary science in 2020 as the most successful graduate in her year, with an average examination grade of 9.29. In her award-winning thesis she described the mechanism and interdependence of the action of two nose-horned viper venom proteins, the secretory phospholipase A2 AtxA and the chymotrypsin inhibitor VaaChi on neuromuscular transmission. Through extensive biochemical and physiological research, she established that VaaChi is the first Kunitz-type protein from a viperid venom that simultaneously inhibits serine proteases and K+ channels in the nerve ending of a motor neuron. The results are original, as demonstrated by their publication in the prestigious international scientific journal Toxicon.

(Mentor Prof. Dr. Robert Frangež, Co-Mentor Prof. Dr. Igor Križaj)