Information technologies and their impact on society gained enormous attention in recent years. Project calls related to use of information technologies in all aspects of human life are saturated with excellent proposals. However large number of proposals leads to low percentage of accepted projects, very often below 10%. High concurrency contributes to quality of project ideas, however many good projects are left behind due to various factors. That is why pre-project collaboration is essential for enhancing coordination among universities. This applies also to region. Another important aspect is industry-university oriented collaboration, which increases research capacities of all involved parties. Projects with industry are very challenging but sometimes carry administrative obstacles if financed from pubic funds (various project lines). This presentation deals with scientific profile of University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI). It will present most prominent projects and project teams with idea to enhance networking, exchange of ideas and possible cooperation opportunities. FOI is willing to contribute significant resources to preparation of project proposals and increasing capacities of regional universities in order to increase overall capacities for passing the threshold in competitive project calls.

1. FACULTY OF ORGANIZATION AND INFORMATICS
UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB
Challenges of Project Cooperation at
University of Zagreb, FOI
NEVEN VR EKČ
DEAN
Prof.dr.sc.

2. www.FOI.unizg.hr
UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB
- UNIZG
The oldest and
the largest
university in
Croatia
1669.
Founded
29
Faculties
3
Art
academies
3
University
centres
• SRCE- IT Centre
• University & National Library
• Student Centre
70
000
Students
(all study levels)
9 000
Teaching staff
(all study levels)
1874.
Became
State university

3. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FACULTY OF ORGANIZATION
AND INFORMATICS - FOI
• Medium sized faculty
• Leading higher
education institution in
Croatia to provide
education in applied
information technology
and information
sciences
1974.
Founded

4. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FOI FIELDS OF EXPERTISE
• Organizational development
• Business process engineering, business
process modelling
• E-business
• deployment of e-business standards
(UBL, CII, Core components)
• security (PKI, CA, accreditation)
• legislative and standards
• semantic and technical interoperability
• cloud computing – interoperabilty,
cost benefit analysys
• E-Government
• Regulatory impact assesment
• Legislative and standards
• E-Learning

5. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FOI FIELDS OF EXPERTISE
• Software modeling and development
• Generative programming
• Automatic programming
• OO Analysis and Design
• Service oriented architecture development
• Database modeling and design
• Web development (XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, Web servisi, AJAX)
• Database development and administration (Oracle, PL/SQL)
• UML Papyrus, Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF Plugins, metamodelling)
• Android development
• Windows Phone development
• iOS DEvelopment
• Scripting languages (Python, Shell, Tcl/Tk, JavaScript, PHP)
• GUI languages (Gambas)
• Declarative languages (SQL, xPath/xQuery, Prolog, Flora-2, Datalog)

6. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FOI FIELDS OF EXPERTISE
• Software Architecture
• Component oriented architecture, pattern languages
• Middleware
• Heterogeneous systems (Multicore, GPU, FPGA)
• Database architecture design
• postgresql, mysql, mssql, oracle
• postgis GEO extensions
• Complex relational or NoSQL database design, implementation and tuning
• PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, CouchDB, eXist-DB, ZODB, Datalog
• Statistical analysis and data mining
• Standard statistical analysis of large data sets (R, SAS, Matlab, Statistica)
• Data mining on large data sets (R, SAS, Matlab, Weka)

7. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FOI FIELDS OF EXPERTISE
• Text mining
• Analysis of large collections of documents
• Automatic classification, clustering
• Semantic information retrieval, dimension reduction
• Cross-lingual information retrieval
• Multi-agent Systems
• Complex multi-agent system design, development and implementation
• Automated planning, negotiation, reasoning etc.
• Finite state machines agent implementation
• Complex agent knowledge-base and ontology implementation
• Agent-based modeling
• SPADE (Smart Python Agent Development Environment), Swarm/SLAPP
(Swarm Like Agent Protocol in Python)

8. www.FOI.unizg.hr
FOI FIELDS OF EXPERTISE
• Information systems security
• Security tools: nmap, ncrack, nessus,
openvas, metasploit framework, w3af,
skipfish, sqlmap, wireshark, john,
oclhashcat
• methodologies: OSSTMM, OWASP,
ISO27000 family, NIST SP800
• security testing, security analysis and
penetration testing
• cryptography systems implementation
and security analysis
• Cloud Computing
• configuring and developing
applications for Google App
Engine, Salesforce and
Microsoft Azure
• migrating data among
different cloud computing
providers
• application programming
interfaces (APIs) based
interoperability of cloud
computing
• Google Web Toolkit widgets

9. 9

10. FSEC
10

11. www.FOI.unizg.hr
INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH
FOI has had experience in:
• EU-funded projects: FP6/7, EUREKA, IPA, TEMPUS, LLP, CARDS
• State funded projects: BICRO, HIT, NSF, MSES, ESF
• Industry funded projects
* Countries
where FOI
established project
cooperation

12. www.FOI.unizg.hr

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16. www.FOI.unizg.hr

17. www.FOI.unizg.hr

18. Consortium
DIGITRANS Partnership (large image example)
• 15 Partners from 7
countries
• 2 associated partners
Digital Transformation in the Danube Region

19. Solution - WiFi AP localization using GPS data from
UMN
• Trillateration

20. Solution - WiFi AP localization using GPS data from
UMN
• Error sources:
 Transmit power changes
 GPS error
 Manufacturer error
 Collinear scans - Mirroring

21. Solution - Route finder - concept
• How to find route between two points using data from
UMS?

22. Simulating Vehicular Visible Light Communication:
Physical Radio and MAC Modeling
• VLC = visible light communication
• Used:
 Internet of things
 Vehicular networks
• MAC – media access protocol
 Design?
• Existing simulators do not support:
 VLC
 Carrier sensing
 Back-off timing
 Most of them have circular estimation
 Interference detection

23. VLC transciever
• VLC Vehicle model:
vehicle
Tx
Rx

24. Preliminary simulations
• 3rd
scenario:

25. MAC for VLC prototype
• Control signal (127 possible channels)
DATADATA
Control signalControl signal
A B
CD
EF

26. KI expert
• Thermodynamics, construction, building materials
• Cooperation
 Knauf Insulation d.o.o Novi Marof
 Technical faculty Rijeka
 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture
Zagreb
 Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning

27. www.FOI.unizg.hr
STUDENT SUPPORT
Startup@foi
•Support for establishment of
companies
•Free consulting, legal
assistance, accounting
services, working space and
networking

28. www.FOI.unizg.hr
http://www.tourgent.co/

29. www.FOI.unizg.hr
http://www.mybeeline.co

30. Project cooperation challenges in Croatia (1/2)
• Strict national rules
 Gold-plating by national agencies – EU guidelines appended by additional restrictions
 Even simple translations of EU guidelines often more restrictive than original texts (ie.
“gross employment costs” translated into a Croatian legal term which excludes
transportation and most of additions to a basic salary)
• Undercapacity of national agencies
 Only few staff with adequate experience and expertise
 Call for proposals often amended several times and deadlines extended
 Responses slow and often too late (comments on a first project interim report received
after 6 months, change in project team still not approved after 3 months…)
• Focus on form, not the content
 Costs not accepted even if directly linked to achieving the project results (ie. travel
costs not accepted for a travel which happened 2 months later then initially planned
but not communicated and approved by the national agency in advance)

31. Project cooperation challenges in Croatia (2/2)
• Rules change during the
project implementation
• Huge administrative
overload
 illustration - project
application form of 60 pages,
appended by several
thousand pages of supporting
documents (salaries for all
team members for the last 12
months, extracts from several
national registers for the
institution, the statute,
classification of
workplaces…)

32. www.FOI.unizg.hr
Thank you.