On Sunday, April 10, 2011, the Director General of the Ruđer Bošković Institute, Danica Ramljak, Ph.D., together with Ankica Marinović, Ph.D., the personal envoy of the President of the Republic of Croatia, Prof. Ivo Josipović, and Ivica Glavan, Mayor of Sinj, will open the Second Festival of Science in Sinj, which has a regional character this year.

The Association of University Teachers and Other Scholars in Zagreb presented its annual awards for 2010 in the presence of the President of the Republic of Croatia, Ivo Josipović. Twelve young scholars and artists received annual awards for enviable achievements in the fields of the natural, technical, biotechnical, humanistic and social sciences and the interdisciplinary field of art.

Today, a Croatian delegation consisting of Dr. Danica Ramljak, Director General of the Ruđer Bošković Institute; Dr. Ivan Pavić and Dr. Dragan Bolanča, Rector and Vice Rector of the University of Split; and Dr. Amir Hamzić, Dean of the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, visited the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, the largest scientific laboratory in the world. For a number of years, Croatian scientists from Split and Zagreb have made significant contributions to major CERN research projects.

With particular sadness, we announce that Professor Zvonimir Maksić, Ph.D., a scientist emeritus of the Ruđer Bošković Institute, has died at the age of 73. His sudden death ended an outstanding and fruitful scientific career and is a great loss to the Institute, his students, associates and colleagues. His creativity, clarity, scientific curiosity and conscientiousness will always be an inspiration and role model.

A paper entitled "Graphical Representation of Proteins" was recently published in the journal Chemical Reviews (Vol. 111, 2011). Chemical Reviews is the most widely cited journal of the American Chemical Society (with an impact factor of 36 and also the first among the 140 journals in the category of Chemistry, Multidisciplinary). Publication in this journal represents great recognition for scientists, in this case staff members of the Center for NMR, Dražen Vikić-Topić, Ph.D., and Dejan Plavšić, Ph.D. The coauthors of the paper are Professors Milan Randić, Ph.D. and Jure Zupan, Ph.D., of Ljubljana and Alexandru T. Balaban, Ph.D., of Galveston, Texas, USA. The graphical representation of biosequences has been a subject of research in bioinformatics for a quarter of a century, with particular momentum during the past ten years provided by our researchers.

Yesterday in the Conference Hall of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, as part of The Embassy Series Sponsored by the Ruđer Bošković Institute, the Ambassador of India to the Republic of Croatia, His Excellency Shri Pradeep Singh, delivered a lecture entitled "The Impact of Innovation on Indian Society". During the course of the lecture, which was attended by approximately 60 guests from the academic and diplomatic communities, Ambassador Singh presented the Indian economy and science.

The President of the Republic of Croatia, Dr. Ivo Josipović, made his first official visit to the Ruđer Bošković Institute today at the invitation of the Director General of the RBI, Dr. Danica Ramljak, and the President of the Scientific Council of the RBI, Dr. Nevenko Bilić. 

On Friday, March 4, at 11 a.m., in the Auditorium of Wing III of the Ruđer Bošković Institute, Bijenička 54, Prof. Yitzhak Apeloig, former President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, will deliver a presentation entitled Science and Technology in the Service of the Modern Economy, as part of the lecture series Distinguished Scientists at the RBI.

As part of the lecture series Distinguished Scientists at the RBI, Professor Goran Senjanović, Ph.D., of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics – ICTP, one of the most influential theoretical physicists in the world, will hold a lecture on February 25 at 1 p.m. in the Auditorium of Wing III entitled LHC and Left-Right Symmetry In Nature.

A scientist from the Ruđer Bošković Institute, Saveta Miljanić, Ph.D., of the Laboratory for Radiation Chemistry and Dosimetry, has been elected to the Council of the European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS) at its recently held annual meeting in Prague.