Partners

Algebra University College is accredited higher educational institution and part of Algebra educational group, employing more than 100 full time and more than 500 part time employees in 28 towns in Croatia. It organizes the currently best-assessed professional study programs in Republic of Croatia according to the quality evaluation results obtained through regular re-accreditation conducted by the National Agency for Science and Higher Education. Dutch-Flemish accreditation agency NVAO, one of European authorities in the field of quality assurance in higher education evaluated the Algebra University College with high marks in all segments, particularly emphasizing the quality of its studies and cooperation with the industry. AUC is the only institution in Croatia that has met the quality criteria of this accreditation agency. Furthermore, Algebra closely cooperates and holds partnership position with many technology providers such as; Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Google, Adobe, Autodesk, and in 2014 became best Microsoft learning partner in global competition of 3200 organizations. Today Algebra University College carries out four undergraduate programs (bachelor) and seven graduate programs (master).

Algebra is the biggest privately owned educational organization in Croatia and is a strong market leader with share of app. 50% in IT end user education, 80 % in IT professional education and 60% in e-learning and e-services that supports training and assessment. AUC expertise includes a wide range of methods, technology and projects related to dana science and data economy. Within this area, AUC researchers implemented research and commercial projects including: churn management models, customer lifetime management models, cost allocation and management systems, advanced visualization and data science/big data architecture services. Areas/industries of expertise include: labour market analysis, VET implementation, NSI support (dissemination databases, advanced visualization and data monetization scenarios). Client range: domestic and international clients including Governments and Government institutions. AUC team’s recent achievements include winning project at “1st Big Data Hackathon”, organized by EUROSTAT and European Commission (March 2017).

Mislav Balković, PhD is University College Professor, Dean of Algebra University College and active researcher in the area of National Qualifications Framework and Knowledge management where he participated in number of national projects including development of legislation for CROQF and implementation of various policy and regulatory documents in higher, VET and adult education. He is currently working on research in the area of Validation of non-formal and informal learning and development of modern educational approaches (methodics and didactics). He was representative of Croatian employers (2010 – 2012) in Advisory Committee for Vocational Education and Training, DG Education and Culture, EU Commission, Bruxelles. Since 2006, he has been intensively involved in the preparation of different types of educational development projects. To this end he prepared more than 60 international and national project’s applications and managed some 40 different projects. Mislav currently acts as the President of the Sector Skills Council ICT, until recently he was a member of the National Council for Science and Higher Education and a member of the Government’s committee for implementation of education, science and technology Strategy in Croatia.

Leo Mršić, PhD is University College Professor, Assistant Research Scientist at Algebra University College where he is currently Vice Dean for R&D. As part of his project experience, together with his team he delivered one of Europe’s most complex churn management models for the international telco client; deployed several recommendation models for retail and insurance; was part of the winning team at 2017 EU Big Data Hackathon organized by European Commission and Eurostat and deployed several intelligent visualization solutions for different industries including government and wholesale. His research area is related to the application of advanced analytics methods and models in business. Currently, as Assistant Research Scientist, he is a team member of the project “Complex Networks” (ARRS P01-0383) in Slovenia.

Maja Brkljačić PhD graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, and she also received her doctorate at the Central European University in Budapest. She worked as a researcher at the Institute for the Wisenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna and as a project coordinator for the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. He is a winner of Erich Maria Remarque’s scholarship at New York University and the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation for Freie Universitat Berlin. She worked as a project manager at Central European University and as a guest lecturer at Northwestern University in the United States. She has published dozens of scientific papers. In the non-scientific part of life, Maja worked as a Director of School Program in the School Book, as Executive Director of the Profiles, and as the Leader of Educational Programs for Students in Algebra. She is a textbook author and has held numerous professional lectures and workshops.

Hrvoje Jerković, PhD is a senior engineer for data analysis and machine learning. Hrvoje works on projects in the field of data science, machine learning, information systems and web applications. Lecturer and researcher at the Algebra LAB Research Center, uses a wide range of methods, technologies and projects related to data science and data economics. In 2012 he received his doctorate at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb in the field of applied computing with the topic “Integration of distance learning systems and digital objects repository”.He is experienced in teaching IT courses and courses live and via the Internet, for domestic and international audiences, students and business users.Rich experience also exists in the implementation of information systems, optimization and content integration with various content management systems.He has been implementing implementation and / or migration projects for elearning, installation and migration of various ERP systems.He has rich experience in information system administration, optimization and IT security consulting, and implementation of cloud technologies and services.

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) (http://www.uva.nl/) was established in 1642 and is the largest university in the Netherlands. UvA is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and one of the top research universities in Europe. It has over 30,000 full time learners and more than 5000 staff. Its alumni include more than a dozen ministers in Dutch governments and two Nobel Prize laureates. The Leadership and Management section of the ABS is a relatively young section aiming to conduct and publish high-quality internationally recognized research and to provide high-quality teaching at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels in these fields. Research methods the group uses are diverse and themes on which group members currently publish include human resource management, ethical and charismatic leadership in organizations, proactive and innovative behaviour, meta-analysis, selection and applicant reactions, the role of time, motivation and emotions, cross-cultural issues in OB and HRM such as expatriate management, and the consequences of project-based organizing for employees and leadership. ABS has a high quality research output, publishing in high impact factor journals (>100 publications in category A and B journals annually), and contributes to editorial boards of highly renowned periodicals. This performance has recently been rewarded with the highly prestigious Triple Crown (ACSB/AMBA/EQUIS) accreditation.

In the ADSEE project UvA will mainly be responsible for the development of the pilots and their analysis, a role that will build forth on UvA expertise acquired in the completed Erasmus+ projects (OntoHR, Ontotechnology, Med-Assess, and Pro-Nursing). UvA will tailor its skills testing instruments to the needs of the ADSEE pilots, and assist in data collection, and analysis and evaluation of the results. Additional experience relevant to the ADSEE project derives from having been intricately involved (in the coordination of) two internal learning analytics projects, the organization of the learning and student analytics conference, and high impact publications in the fields of data science research methods and learning analytics.

Stefan Mol is assistant professor in Organizational Behavior and Research Methods at the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam and Co-founder of the Center of Job Knowledge Research. He received his Master’s degree in psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 2000, and his PhD in psychology in 2007, at the Institute of Psychology of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His dissertation consists of four studies investigating expatriate selection practices and one study aimed at assessing the performance of police trainees in South-Africa. His research collaborations have appeared in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2003), the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (2013), Human Performance (2009), IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (2015), the International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2005), the International Journal of Knowledge and Learning (2012), the International Journal of Selection and Assessment (2009), the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2005; 2016), the Journal of Global Mobility (2013), the Journal of Learning Analytics (2014; 2016), the Journal of Vocational behavior (in press), Organizational Research Methods (2017; 2017), and several handbooks. In addition, Stefan was involved in the EU-Funded Leonardo da Vinci Ontohr (see www.ontohr.eu), Med-Assess (see www.med-assess.eu) and Ontotech (see www.ontotech.eu) projects. From 2013-2017 Stefan is serving on the Board of Management and Supervisory Board of the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) Eduworks (see http://www.eduworks-network.eu) a project aimed at the socio-economic and psychological dynamics of labour supply and demand matching processes at aggregated and disaggregated levels. Finally, Stefan was involved in the coordination of university wide project aimed at establishing Learning Analytics at the University of Amsterdam from 2013-2016, and its successor from 2017-2018.

Alan Mark Berg BSc MSc, PGCE, is a consultant on IT and Data on Education for the central services for the University of Amsterdam and Hoog School of Amsterdam. He has been the lead developer at Central Computer Services at the University of Amsterdam since 1998. In his famously scarce spare time, he writes, consults and is currently a PhD candidate in Learning Analytics. Alan has a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, a teaching qualification, and quality assurance certifications. He was the main authored of two Packt Publishing books about Sakai (http://sakaiproject.org), a highly successful open source learning management platform used by millions of students around the world. Alan has also written three Books on continuous delivery. He has won a couple of awards, including the Sakai Fellowship and Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) and regularly publishes magazine articles. Alan strongly believes in open and International community processes and has been the QA director of the Sakai foundation, community officer of the Apereo Foundations Learning Analytics Initiative and a board member of the Apereo Foundation. He is currently active in a number of Special Interest Groups. Alan’s previous research includes building large scale infrastructure for Learning Analytics, synthetic data generation, standardisation and combining novel data sources to improve the Educational process.

The Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) ‒ German National Library of Science and Technology ‒ Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library is a public-law foundation of the Federal State of Lower Saxony. It assumed responsibility for operating the German National Library for technology, architecture, chemistry, information technology, mathematics and physics as well as the University Library for Leibniz Universität Hannover. As a central specialised library, it is a national infrastructure facility for the provision of scientific information whose national tasks lend it importance for the country as a whole. TIB is a member of the Leibniz Association. Its remit is to preserve recorded knowledge and to provide the latest information for research and industry, both now and in the future, irrespective of the time and the place. The aim of TIB is to provide its customers with innovative, efficient and smooth access to data, information and knowledge, and to make large information spaces available to them in a structured, suitable manner. As the world’s largest specialised library in its fields, the library has excellent collections of technical and scientific specialist and research information. The TIB has outstanding expertise in developing and preserving knowledge, particularly in key areas such as grey literature, conference and research reports, university publications, research data, films and 3D object, literature from East Asia and Eastern Europe, as well as patents and standards. TIB makes its collections available to users as openly and simply as possible via user-oriented portals, protecting them for future generations. Key areas are the TIB document delivery, the local TIB services, the AV-Portal, Open Access, negotiating licences and digital preservation. TIB supports specialist and research communities in their learning and work processes. Researchers, industry, business, teaching staff and practitioners alike benefit from its globally unique collections and reliable cross-media research infrastructure. Knowledge transfer in the realms of research, society and policy is guaranteed by strategic alliances, global networking and active memberships. TIB conducts applied research and development to optimise the services it offers. The aim is to ensure that its unique collections, featuring steadily growing data volumes, can be retrieved and searched in a sustainable, future-proof manner. By cooperating with international research institutions, TIB creates the necessary infrastructures and resources, at the same time reinforcing its own innovative capacity. TIB staff: 536 TIB staff in research and development: 54

TIB as a whole is highly committed to Open Access and Open Science , being actively involved in a number of activities (like arXix-DH, SCOAP3 as well as further activities on an local and national level) that put forward the full switch of scientific publishing to Open Access, as envisioned by (among others) the European Commission. At the same time, TIB leads the turn towards data-based publishing in science, e.g. through its leadership of German research institutions as members of the ORCID consortium (ORCID-DE). In grant-awarded projects, since 2016 e.g. NOA, a project on reusable images from openly licensed scientific literature, TIB works closely with the Wikimedia community to make sure that scientific content is available in a way that supports discovery and reuse from a large, varied audience outside of academia. Furthermore TIB is one of the driving forces behind SlideWiki, which is a collaborative platform that allows individuals and groups to create, import and share slide decks, allowing to fork and remix existing slides, integrate LaTeX/MathML etc. The SlideWiki EU project started 2016 with seventeen partners from Europe and Brazil using the award-winning open-source SlideWiki platform from Germany as a basis. All project goals aiming at creating a large scale accessible learning and teaching platform using educational technology, skill recognition and global collaboration.

Prof. Dr. Sören Auer [m] is professor for Data Science and Digital Libraries at Leibniz University of Hannover and director of TIB German National Library of Science and Technology. Sören has made substantial contributions to semantic web technologies, knowledge engineering, software engineering, usability, as well as databases and information systems. Sören is author (respectively co-author) of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, which attracted more than 10.000 citations and result in an H-index of 45. He received several awards, such as the ESWC 7-year best paper award or the OpenCourseware Innovation award. He led several large-scale collaborative research projects such as the European Union’s H2020 flagship project BigDataEurope. Sören is cofounder of several high-impact research and community projects such as the Wikipedia semantification project DBpedia, the OpenCourseWare authoring platform SlideWiki.org or the spatial data integration platform LinkedGeoData. The technology Sören develops with his team fuels many industrial applications. He is organiser, programme or track co-chair of renowned conferences and workshops, including OKCON 2010, ESWC 2010, ICWE 2011, WWW 2012, European Data Forum. He serves as an expert for industry, the European Commission, the W3C and board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Dr Gábor Kismihók is the head of the Learning and Skills Analytics research Group at TIB. He concentrates his research efforts on matching processes between education, labour market, and individuals. Previously he co-founded the Center of Job Knowledge Research at the University of Amsterdam, and supervised there 5 PhD students in the fields of HRM – data science and learning analytics. He is also a regular supervisor of MSc and BSc student theses. He published his research in various peer-reviewed international journals and book chapters in the fields of Learning Analytics, Technology Enhanced Learning and Knowledge Management. In the past years he has been busy with various EU funded research projects (FP7, FP7 Marie Curie ITN, Lifelong Learning Programme) focused on employability, person – organization fit, mobile Learning Management System development, context aware educational systems and semantic technology in education. Besides scientific research, he has been managing large scale innovation networks (e.g. www.eduworksnetwork. eu) with a budget of 3,7M EUR (working staff of 25-30 people) and smaller scale innovation projects (e.g. www.ontohr.eu) with a budget of 500K EUR (working staff of 10-15 people). He has also been busy writing successful research project proposals (FP7, FP7 MC ITN, EU LLP, TAMOP). He is a member of expert panels reviewing proposals for EU funding. Dr. Gino Erkeling [m] is the EU research liaison officer at TIB and will add expertise on project administration. He has worked for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA) and has experience of more than 10 years as a project manager. In particular, he has coordinated at Muenster University (Germany) a Helmholtz alliance between 2008 and 2012. Between 2012 and 2017, he was a team leader of the ESA mission Mars Express. Since 2015, he is Co-I of Mars Express. He is well familiar with German and European grant programmes, in particular with funding via the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the European research and innovation framework programme Horizon 2020.

FIS is pursuing the vision to be one of the major European academic institutions in applied industrial research and a partner to the business environment, public administrations and social and health agencies at the regional, national and European levels. FIS has some 300 students at BA, MA and Ph.D level, 70 members of academic staff and 10 members of administrative staff. While pursuing excellence in teaching, FIS is a research- and project-oriented HEI; 70 % of its budget comes from EU projects. Most relevant from the perspective of this proposal are, first, the Danube Region Interreg InnoHPC – High-Performance Computing for Effective Innovation in the Danube Region – (2017-2019) where it is the Lead Partner of a large transnational consortium. Second, ERDF co-financed Creative Core “Simulations” (2013-2015) which adopts high performance computing (HPC) as a tool for modelling and simulation for various purposes, i.e. bio-inspired networks, categorisation and simulation of document flows; simulation of business processes, and manufacturing, services and transport/logistics simulation. Third, ESF co-financed project “Quality Assurance in ICT Education” (2013-2015) in which it was developing a portfolio of quality assurance mechanisms, managerial instruments and internal process structure for institution providing ICT education. FIS is a member of Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Innovative Training Network “COSMOS” (2015-2018) and is associated with PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), pan-European supercomputing infrastructure and member of consortium of FLAG-ERA Joint Transnational Project “Preparation and characterization of single/few layer antimonene and germanium” (2018-2021). Research staff at FIS possesses a variety of complementary skills and competences that revolve around the interdisciplinary interface between computer science on one side and natural and social sciences on the other side. Strongest emphasis is on the computational modeling and analysis of the complex systems, and in particular from the perspective of networks/graphs, in addition to methodological approaches from statistical physics, dynamical systems, general machine learning and data visualization. The work is carried out both in the context of natural sciences (physics, psychology, neuroscience, biology) and social sciences (business and logistics modeling, analysis of migrations). FIS has an intense collaboration with diverse laboratories worldwide producing or having access to state-of-the-art experimental data in these fields. Recent addition of high performance computing infrastructure established a novel research orientation towards Big data mining and analysis.

Boris Rončević, PhD. Expertise in innovations and technology in regional development, with a special focus on South-East European societies. Particular research topics include regional innovation systems, social capital, multi-level strategic processes, and socio-cultural factors of development of East European societies. Substantial experience in field research, with a particular focus on Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Research results include 24 peer reviewed articles, 24 monograph chapters, 9 books and 1 edited volume. Professional experience in both public and private sector. This includes extended period in academia (teaching and research), Director of public research and development institution University and research center of Novo mesto, and Director General for higher education and science at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of Republic of Slovenia. Consultancy for local, regional and national governments (Slovenia, Belgium), for foundations (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung) and international organizations (Council of Europe) on the topics of regional development, regional innovation, labour markets and social policy and for international industrial (Iskra Zaščita, Varsi) and service companies (HIT d.o.o.), including partner of the Center of Excellence “Advanced Materials and Technologies for the Future (NAMASTE)”. Participated in more than 15 projects since 6th Framework Programme, projects also co-financed by Erasmus+ and ERDF (Interreg). This includes the role of Lead Partner in the running project InnoHPC (High-Performance Computing for Effective Innovation in the Danube Region, 2017-2019).

Nadja Damij, PhD Expert in Business Process Management and Project Management Research results include over 10 peer reviewed articles, a book (published by Springer), 2 monograph chapters (including Peter Lang and Springer), and various conference papers. Participated in more than 10 projects, with various roles: project author, PI, team member, coordinator

Dolores Modic, PhD Expert in Intellectual Property Rights based university-industry collaboration research, especially licensing Research results include 9 peer reviewed articles, 11 monograph chapters (including Cambridge University Press, Routledge and Springer), 4 monographs and various conference papers (including two invited) Professional experience in both public and private sector, including employment in one of the partners of the Center of Excellence “Advanced Materials and Technologies for the Future (NAMASTE)” and practical experience in legal consultancy and patent applications; as well as legal analysis and (legal and IPR) consultancy experience Participated in more than 15 projects, with various roles: project author, PI, team member, coordinator Good knowledge of regional innovation systems and issues related to the innovation frameworks and collaboration between actors (experience with legal analysis as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis pertaining to regional innovation systems in the area – extra bonus is expert’s knowledge of the national language in Montenegro); actively involved in regional innovation and IPR analysis since 2009. Biljana Mileva Boshkoska, PhD Expert in Decision support systems. Research results include over 10 peer reviewed articles, a book (published by Springer), 2 monograph chapters, and various conference papers. Participated in more than 10 projects, with various roles: project author, PI, team member, coordinator. Editor of the proceedings of International Conference on Information Technologies and Information Society (2015). Co-organizer of International Conference on Information Technologies and Information Society.

Arctur is a Research & Development oriented SME, active in the field of ICT. Since its establishment Arctur has progressed to become the main Slovenian commercial supplier of HPC (High Performance Computing) services and solutions. Arctur has its own HPC and Cloud Computing infrastructure to be used as the technological foundation for advanced HPC and Cloud computing solutions and innovative web services in a distributed, high-redundancy environment. The company has extensive experience in server virtualization and deployment, integration of disparate ITsystems, IT support of project-management and server farm leverage for the deployment of Software as a Service (SaaS), specialized for small and media enterprises (SME). In recent years Arctur is active in the field of mobile solutions, interlacing them with web and Cloud platforms. Company has also entered the fast-developing field of 3D printing, both in data acquisition and 3D modelling, supported with parallel computations and remote visualization and rendering in a dedicated Cloud-based ecosystem. Endeavors related to 3D technologies are often pertinent to the field of cultural heritage. Arctur is leading the way in new concepts and paradigms on not-so-typical ICT topics like Tourism 4.0. Arctur has contributed to a number of non-ICT projects, spanning from various societal issues to innovation and creativity support methods to cultural heritage, providing both technical expertise in development and support of specific tools, as well as understanding of technology related issues to enhance theoretical work in shaping strategies and roadmaps for future research and sustainability models.

Arctur has considerable experience in delivering IT services to novel and first-time users. Arctur will support the project by delivering HPC and Cloud services to support the development of the Applied Data Science Educational Ecosystem and by acting as an applied expert.

Tomi Ilijaš is founder and president of Arctur and he holds a MSC degree from Ljubljana University. Mr. Ilijaš is an entrepreneur with focus on Hi-Tech innovation and has shared his knowledge and experience to many start-ups and spin-offs in the region. Recently he is researching new business models in HPCaaS and successfully breaking the barriers in bringing HPC to manufacturing SMEs. – T. Ilijaš (2016), HPC in Cloud – Delivering Services to SMEs, Nesus Winter S- chool, Proceedings, Timisoara – M. Kljajić Borštnar, T. Ilijaš, A. Pucihar (2015) – Assessment of Cloud High Performance Computing potential for SMEs, BLED 2015 Proceedings, ISBN 978-961-6165-45-7, pg 23 – 28 – M. Kljajić Borštnar, T. Ilijaš, A. Pucihar (2014) – Multi-attribute model for assessment of SMEs adoption of high performance computing cloud services, Spain, pg 255 – M. Kljajić Borštnar, V. Kobal, T. Ilijaš (2013) – Impacts of implementation of project management information system in a small R&D company – case study; Portorož, pg 385 – 393, ISBN 978-961- 232-264-9

Martina Murovec is COO of Arctur and holds a Bachelor’s in business and management from University of Primorska. Ms. Murovec has an extensive experience in managing international projects in multicultural environment and leading virtual project teams.

Nejc Bat holds a Masters in Industrial Engineering from University of Nova Gorica. He has experience and competences in delivering HPC in cloud computing, especially to small and medium enterprises. Mr. Bat is actively working on numerous EU funded projects and has considerable experience in management and coordination. His main areas of focus are on HPC and Cloud business models, innovation and exploitation as well as innovation transfer an application on the market. The applications that he focuses on are engineering applications (e.g. CAx, CFD, FEM…), visualization methods and remote access to services. – N.Bat, T. Šubić (2019) – Benefits of simulation – industry use cases from the point of view of a commercial HPC infrastructure provider – NAFEMS conference article