University of Rijeka

The University of Rijeka is the fundamental educational and research institution in the western part of Croatia. Founded in 1973 following a long-standing tradition of higher education institutions and activities, the University of Rijeka has 16 constituents: an academy of applied arts, ten faculties and four university departments, with over 161 study programmes. University of Rijeka has 16 500 students, over 1700 employees and almost 1000 researchers. To ensure better working conditions and strong impetus for development, the new Campus has been built. The University of Rijeka was the first Croatian University to set a development strategy. It focuses on excellence, quality assurance, life-long learning, active collaboration with the local community & economy and active inclusion into the EHEA & ERA.

Department of Informatics at the University of Rijeka resulted from a long-term development of educational and scientific activities in the field of informatics which date back to the year 1986 when the Institute of Informatics was founded (later renamed as the Department of Informatics) at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (later renamed as the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) in Rijeka.

The Department of Informatics was founded in April 2008 with the mission of creating conditions necessary for scientific research in the area of social sciences in the field of information and communication sciences and in the area of technical sciences in the field of computing. Members of the Department work on educational and scientific activities in the domain of information systems, intelligent systems, networking and communication systems including the development of multimedia learning support systems (e-learning systems). The aim of the Department is to significantly intensify cooperation with the economy in order to better prepare our students for future work challenges. The Department offers all three levels of higher education.

The Department also organizes Research Class, Business Class and Open Class lectures for the general public, different workshops (e.g. “ICT tools and services for translators”, Code Club workshops for primary schools, different workshops for primary and secondary teachers) and the Open Day with lots of activities for secondary school students.

The Department of Informatics, as a scientific and educational constituent of the University of Rijeka, conducts scientific and developmental research in information and communication sciences and related disciplines. It has established a wide network of research links with foreign universities and currently participates in eight international projects, two projects of the Croatian Science Foundations, and numerous University of Rijeka grants and projects.

Marija Brkic Bakaric, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the area of Social Sciences, the field of Information and Communication sciences at the Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka. She graduated from the double-major study of Informatics and English language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2006. She earned a PhD degree at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 2013. Marija is a course coordinator and a lecturer for the following courses: General systems theory, Algorithms and data structures, and ICT for translators. She is also a course coordinator for the post-graduate course Machine Translation. In 2005 she received a recognition from the University of Rijeka for her teaching activities at the Department.

Marija Brkic Bakaric has published over 40 research papers. Her scientific work is in the area of artificial intelligence, in particular data mining and the application of machine learning algorithms in different domains, with a special focus on machine translation and natural language processing. She is also a permanent court interpreter for the English language. Marija is currently involved in several research projects:
- project leader of the bilateral Croatian-Chinese project “Paper based printed sensing technology and quality detection method for perishable food cold chain management and traceability” funded by the Ministry of Education and Science (2017-2019.)
- project leader of the university project “NEUral MAchine TRAnslation Targeting Croatian – NEUMATRAC” funded by the University of Rijeka (2018/2019)
- associate on the bilateral Croatian-Slovenian project “Bilingualism in Slovene and Croatian Istria on the case of translations of administrative texts” funded by the Ministry of Education and Science (2017-2019.)
- associate on the university project “Data Stream Mining for Smart Cold Chain Management (SmaCC)” funded by the University of Rijeka (2019-2021.)

With a graduate degree in English and a PhD degree in Information and Communication Sciences, Marija with her two-fold role will add a special value to the project as she is an expert in two project fields she will be part of the IT tool development as well as the formation of guidelines for a specific LSP area.

Vanja Slavuj is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Rijeka. He received his BA and MA degrees in Informatics and English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, and his PhD in Information and Communication Sciences from the Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka. His research interests include distance learning, computer assisted language learning, application of information and communication technology in the classroom, and intelligent and adaptive (language) learning systems. He regularly publishes in peer-reviewed journals, participates at scientific conferences within his field, and works on a number of international scientific projects related to distance learning.

Lucia Načinović Prskalo is an assistant professor at the Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka. She graduated from the double-major study of Informatics and English language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. She earned a PhD degree in social sciences, the field of information and communication sciences from the Postgraduate Doctoral Study in Information and Communication Sciences at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. The title of her doctoral dissertation is "Automatic Prediction and Modelling of Croatian Prosodic Features Based on Text". Since 2009, she has been employed at the Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka, where she worked as a teaching and research assistant until 2016, from 2016 to 2019 as a postdoctoral fellow, and in 2019 she became an assistant professor in the area of social sciences, the field of information and communication sciences. Since her employment at the Department of Informatics, she has been actively involved in the preparation and delivery of undergraduate and graduate studies, and is currently a course coordinator and a lecturer for the courses Introduction to Data Analysis and Visualization and English for Information Technology. She participated in several international and national projects.

Lucia’s research interests are natural language processing, speech and language technologies, data analysis and visualization, machine learning, language prosody, speech synthesis, artificial intelligence. She has published and reviewed a number of scientific papers in the aforementioned areas of research.

Marija Brkić Bakarić
Assistant Professor
mbrkic@uniri.hr

Vanja Slavuj
Assistant Professor
vslavuj@uniri.hr

Lucia Načinović Prskalo
Assistant Professor
lnacinovic@unri.hr