Danilo Zavrtanik (born 15 August 1953) is a

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

. Born in

Nova Gorica A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...

, he graduated in 1979 from the Faculty for Natural Sciences and Technology of the

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana ( sl, Univerza v Ljubljani, , la, Universitas Labacensis), often referred to as UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 39,000 enrolled students. History Beginnings Although certain ...

. In 1987, he obtained his PhD by defending a doctoral dissertation on "Angular distribution analysis of the reaction π⁻p -> π⁻π⁺n". From 2006 he is a full professor of physics at the

University of Nova Gorica The University of Nova Gorica, UNG ( sl, Univerza v Novi Gorici), is the fourth university in Slovenia. It is located in the towns of Nova Gorica, Gorizia (in Italy), Vipava, and Ajdovščina. History The University of Nova Gorica grew out of ...

and the head of the Laboratory for Astroparticle Physics. Before 1995 he was active in experimental particle physics through international collaborations CPLEAR and

DELPHI Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracle ...

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

, where he was involved in the development of particle detectors, studies of CP, T and CPT violation in the decays of neutral kaons K⁰ and studies of heavy quark decays, W gauge boson decays and

Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Stand ...

searches. Since 1995 he is working in the field of astroparticle physics within the Pierre Auger Collaboration, focusing on studies of cosmic rays with extreme energies. He is a co-author of more than 350 scientific papers and more than 150 conference contributions. He has been a thesis adviser to a number of undergraduate and graduate students at the

and the

. From 1992 to 1996 he served as director-general of the

Jožef Stefan Institute The Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS, JSI) ( sl, Institut "Jožef Stefan") is the largest research institute in Slovenia. The main research areas are physics, chemistry, molecular biology, biotechnology, information technologies, physics, reactor ph ...

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

. In 1995 he initiated the founding the School of Environmental Sciences in Nova Gorica which grew into Nova Gorica Polytechnic and finally into

. Since the beginning he has been serving as the president of this institution (from 2010 as a

rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

). Among his many honours and awards the most distinguished are: " Order of Merit (Slovenia)" in 2005 "Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia" in 1997 and " Zois Award" (highest Slovenian award for scientific achievements) in 2004.

References

Personal page

External links

Scientific publications of Danilo Zavrtanik
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

1953 births Living people People associated with CERN University of Ljubljana alumni Academic staff of the University of Nova Gorica {{Slovenia-academic-bio-stub