Zdenko Kovačić

Zdenko Kovačić is a Full Professor at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (UNIZG-FER) in Zagreb. He is the founder (1996) and leader of the Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems at UNIZG-FER. As an IREX guest researcher, he spent a year at the Bradley Department of Electrical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blackburg, USA. His areas of interest are robotics and automatics and has let over 40 research and development projects, both domestic and international. He has mentored 7 PhD students and over 200 BSc and MSc students. He is the author and coauthor of two scientific monographs (Springer Verlag and CRC Press), a university textbook, 8 chapters in books and a large number of scientific papers in journals and proceedings of some of the leading international conferences from related fields. From 2004 to 2008 he was the head of the Department of Control and Computer Engineering. He has won numerous awards from the University of Zagreb and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing for his contributions to scientific development and education. He is also a senior member of various organizations in the field of automation and robotics (such as IEEE), part of the editorial team of several publications, a reviewer, and chair or member of programme committees for many international conferences and other events. He has actively participated in many science popularization programmes, particularly in Zagreb and Croatia.