Members of the program are very active as editors, members of editorial boards and referees of both international and national scientific journals. R. Podgornik is co-editor in chief of Journal of Biological Physics published by Springer. P. Ziherl was a guest co-editor of a special issue of Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. R. Podgornik was co-editor of special issue of J. Biol. Phys. entitled "Special issue on physical virology"; M. Brumen, M. Čepič, M. Marhl, and P. Ziherl are members of editorial boards of international journals ISRN Biomathematics, European Journal of Physics and The Scientific World, Biosystems and PMC Biophysics, and Physical Review E, respectively. M. Brumen, M. Marhl, and M. Čepič are members of editorial boards of national journals Proteus, Presek, and Fizika v šoli and Revija za elementarno izobrazevanje, respectively. R. Podgornik and J. Dobnikar co-edited the proceedings "Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter" (Pan Stanford Publishing, Singapore, 2014) and P. Ziherl coedited the proceedings "Physics of Complex Colloids" (Societa Italiana di Fisica, Bologna, 2013). Each year, members of the program review well over 100 manuscripts submitted to a host of established international journals. The international impact of our work is partly due to 90 lectures at universities and institutes abroad as well as more than 50 invited lectures at international conferences given by the members of the program.
C.04 Editorial board of an international magazine
During the past 6-year period, members of the program co-organized many international and national scientific meetings. The biggest events held were the 11th European Conference on Liquid Crystals (Maribor, February 6-11 2011) and the conference Physics of Complex Colloids (Ljubljana, May 14-18 2013) which brought the most outstanding researchers in the fields of liquid crystals and colloids, respectively, from allover the World to Slovenia. They also organized: conference Confined Liquid Crystals: Landmarks and Perspectives (Ljubljana, July 19-20 2010), workshops Christmas Biophysics Workshops (Ptuj, December 10-11 2010; Dobrna, December 16-17 2013), Mechanics of Tissues (Ljubljana, October 29-30 2012), and Graphene Workshop (Ajdovščina, April 8-11 2013). They co-organized the Workshop on Physical Virology (Trieste, September 24-28 2012), two CECAM workshops (New Challenges in Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter, Toulouse, May 7-10 2012; Emergent Dynamics in Driven Colloids, Lausanne, April 26- 8 2012), and the conference Physics of Cells From Soft to Living Matter (Hyères, September 5-9 2012). Members of the program were involved in the organization of summer schools Physics of Complex Colloids (Varenna, July 3-13 2012) and Physics in Ljubljana (Ljubljana, July 17-24 2011) as well as of the 13th, 14th and 15th Slovenian Meeting on Applied Physics (Bled 2009, Portorož 2011, Bled 2013). P. Ziherl coordinates the Wednesday Colloquia at the Jožef Stefan Institute.
B.01 Organiser of a scientific meeting
One of the defining characteristics of the program is a strong higher education teaching component at all levels. Members of the program teach more than 50 courses at University of Ljubljana, University of Maribor, and University of Nova Gorica. Members of the program were visiting professors at universities in the USA, the UK and Japan, and they hosted several visiting students from abroad. During the past 6 years they supervised 17 PhD students, 6 Master of Science students as well as 88 University-, Bachelor-, and Master- Degree students in total. R. Podgornik is coauthor of a new university textbook on electromagnetic field in Slovenian language. M. Čepič is author of scientific textbook in English on methods of teaching Science through experimenting on liquid crystals, published by international publisher. Members of the program coauthored 4 university textbooks, 5 high-school and elementary-school textbooks as well as 18 lecture notes. They reviewed 20 high-school and elementary-school textbooks and 2 university text-books. Members of the program, especially M. Čepič and N. Vaupotič, also developed new didactic methods and approaches of teaching Physics and Science at all levels of education, published 14 didactic and 14 professional papers over the past 6-year period. M. Čepič and N. Vaupotič organized a pedagogical session at the 11th European Conference on Liquid Crystals. M. Čepič was PI in 2 national projects devoted to the introduction of interdisciplinary topics in the study process and a member of 2 international didactic projects within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. A part of these activities took place in collaboration with partners from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Finally, M. Marhl and N. Vaupotič were engaged in the project Development of competences in sciences.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 10395209In addition to the research and teaching, several members of the program are engaged in various offices at national and at international level. M. Marhl was vice-rector of the University of Maribor and G. Bratina is vice-rector of the University of Nova Gorica, N. Vaupotič and G. Bratina are deans of Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor and School of Applied Sciences, University of Nova Gorica, respectively. At the University of Ljubljana B. Božič is head of Institute of Biophysics at the Medical Faculty and M. Čepič is head of Department of Physics at the Faculty of Education. At the University of Maribor M. Brumen is head of Chair of Biophysics at the Faculty of Medicine as well as head of Chair of Bioinformatics at Faculty of Health Sciences, and A. Fajmut was head of Department of Physics at Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in years 2009-13. Members of the program are members of many committees at their universities and institutes. In addition, members of the program are active within the Slovenian Biophysical Society; M. Brumen is its president. At the international level, they were engaged in the management of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network COMPLOIDS where J. Dobnikar and P. Ziherl were deputy coordinator and coordinator of training activities, respectively. P. Ziherl is member of the Steering Committee of the ESF Research Networking Programme QuanTissue.
D.08 Management and development of research activities
Members of the program have ongoing collaborations with several research teams in industry and clinical medicine. With Lek Pharmaceuticals, d.d., they collaborate on research of intermolecular interactions, relevant for industrial production of biopharmaceuticals. With Aresis d.o.o. they develop biological applications for Tweez optical tweezers. Members of the program were involved in three research projects with University Medical Centre Ljubljana: in the research of eye-lens pathology, in the analysis of the role of omega-3 fatty acids in parenteral nutrition for new-borns, and in the research of function of beta-2 glycoprotein I. Together with TalkingCells, Wiesbaden, Germany, they work on a new non-invasive method for assessment of hypersensitivity to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. For the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia they worked out the analyses of the skeleto-muscular working loads of employees in Slovenian health institutions. N. Vaupotič is co-author of a patent application in Poland, describing a device for measuring the magnetic dipole moment of nanoparticles, and U. Jelerčič is co-author of three Slovenian patents (SI 23182 (A), 2011-10-12; SI 23183 (A), 2011-04-29; SI 23184 (A), 2011-04-29) and one European patent (EP2488546 (B1), 2014-12-31) in the field of biotechnology.
F.21 Development of new health/diagnostic methods/procedures
COBISS.SI-ID: 5666586