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The Faculty of Sciences invites us to observe the stars

The project ‘Vojvodina and Bács-Kiskun Night Sky as a Novel Touristic Attraction’, with the acronym VoBaNISTA, is financed by the Interreg-IPA Cross-border Cooperation Programme Hungary-Serbia. The participants in the project are research associates and professors at the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad, as well as the members of Astronomical Societies of Novi Sad and Backa Palanka, together with the Baja Astronomical Observatory Foundation, Hungary.

The aim of the project is to use untouched potential of the region Vojvodina – Bac-Kiskun which is the quality of the night sky, natural reserves and cultural heritage and to develop them into new tourist attractions of the region. Namely, the project will be realised through building a unique mobile observatory which will enable tourists to observe astronomical objects – planets, star clusters and galaxies as well as the phenomena on the sun, our mother star, mainly from the protected nature reserve areas, as well as in urban areas. This calls for the collaboration with tourist organizations and the participation in festivals and other events which are relevant for tourism in the region. Workshops will also be organised with the aim of pointing out the problem of light pollution, as well as several astronomical camps in Fruska Gora.

Achievements

Our Professor, the Vice President of the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry

ECMI – European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry is a consortium of academic institutions from Europe and industrial companies which act cooperatively with the aim of promoting and supporting mathematical modelling in activities which are of social and economic importance. They also educate mathematicians for solving real problems and thus increase the number of mathematical experts in respective fields of applied mathematics.

This renowned organisation has recently announced their new Vice President and they appointed Dr Nataša Krejic, Full Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, who will take over the new position on January 1st.

Prof. Krejic conducts research in numerical mathematics and optimisation with applications. In the course of her research career, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Campinas in Brazil on several occasions, participating in the projects financed by Sao Paolo Research Foundation, Brazil, Erasmus Mundus researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Holland, 2009), senior researcher at the Central European University in Budapest (2009) and Sigma Agilee scholarship holder at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. She published more than 60 scientific papers and five textbooks. In 2004, she received the successful researcher award from the Ministry of Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia and Charles Broyden award in 2016. She mentored seven doctoral dissertations. She was the project leader in two research projects and she is the editor in three international mathematical journals.

This choice is a result of the activity of our Department of Mathematics and Informatics within this consortium. The Department became a full member of the ECMI educational node in May last year with the Master Programme in Applied Mathematics and it is the only full member outside the European Union, and together with the Sofia University forms the only full educational node in Eastern Europe. ECMI committee gave high scores to this programme, recognising it as modern and promising, opening up opportunities to follow modern trends in applied mathematics and being harmonized with high standards of ECMI.

As a full member of this big European mathematical family, the Department of Mathematics and Informatics gained numerous advantages. ECMI regularly organizes all forms of meetings, conferences for teachers and students, winter and summer schools for students, meetings aimed to model real problems (so-called Modelling Week), publishing calls for various projects, posting job announcement for European companies, etc. Students can share their experiences and knowledge via courses in applied mathematics. Most importantly, the students of this master programme will also receive ECMI certificate after fulfilling some additional requirements, in addition to the master degree certificate from University of Novi Sad, which will open up a door to Europe for them. Three years ago, the Faculty of Sciences hosted the 99th Meeting of the European Study Group for Solving Current Problems in the Industry which was organised in collaboration with the European Consortium. Over 50 mathematicians from Serbia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Poland participated and jointly solved problems of six Serbian companies. The workshop created opportunities for future scientific projects and further cooperation of the Faculty of Sciences with the present companies, as well as the cooperation among the participating universities.

Next year, the Faculty of Sciences will host ECMI Modelling Week, and will welcome numerous master students from ECMI universities, and the students will work on real problems that can be solved by applying mathematical modelling.

Achievements

10th International Culinary Competition of Southern Europe

Tenth International Culinary Competition of Southern Europe was held in Thessaloniki from March 3rd to 6th 2017 in the organisation of the Chefs Association of Northern Greece. The competition was supported by the World Association of Chefs Societies (WACS) and the Greek Ministry of Tourism and the Government of Greece.

There were over 400 contestants from ten countries in the competition: Taiwan, Turkey, Cyprus, Montenegro, Latvia, Ukraine, Serbia, and the jury featured the best world-known judges from Greece, Italy, France, Mexico, Slovenia, Montenegro, Cyprus, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, USA, Turkey, Latvia, together with the President of the World Association of Chefs Societies Tomas Gugler.

The Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad had its representatives in this prestigious competition, who returned home with the awards:

  • Goran Radivojevic, Gastronomy Skills Teacher – silver medal in the poultry category in the professional chefs competition,
  • Maja Banjac, PhD student and teaching assistant at the Chair of Gastronomy – silver medal in the pasta category in the professional chefs competition,
  • Jelena Jevtic – 4th year student of Gastronomy – a diploma in the restaurant dessert junior category and
  • Goran Gasparovski – silver medal in the risotto category in the junior competition.

Students Jelena and Goran competed in a team discipline ‘Two to Tango’ with 15 teams from higher vocational schools, faculties and hotels and they won a bronze medal.

Our team got rave reviews from the exceptional world-famous judges who are all respectable and renowned chefs in their countries, which represents a great acknowledgement for the quality of our students and their teachers and assistants.

Contacts were established in the competition with numerous universities from Greece and Taiwan, so we hope we will succeed in developing quality collaboration and contribute to the teaching process for our students.

Achievements

Professors Velimir Popsavin and Slobodan Marković corresponding members of SASA

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts chose 35 new members yesterday: 15 full, 14 corresponding and six international members. The members of SASA had 58 candidates presented to the Election Assembly to choose from by a secret ballot. New members of SASA from the Novi Sad branch are Prof. Dr. Slobodan Marković from the Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management and Prof. Dr. Velimir Popsavin from the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Environmental Protection.

Achievements,