The RBI Director General Danica Ramljak, DVM, PhD, and her team today visited the Jozef Štefan Institute (JSI), where they met with the Director General professor Jadran Lenčarić, PhD, and his associates. The purpose of this meeting was to examine the ways and means of strengthening the ongoing fruitful cooperation between the two institutes pursuant to the existing bilateral agreement on scientific and technological cooperation between the governments of the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Slovenia. With this aim in view, the two teams have agreed to meet with their expert teams again in September.

Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić has met with the RBI Director General Danica Ramljak and her associates today. The purpose of this working meeting was to provide the Mayor with the brief summary of the joint research and development projects as well as to review the obligations defined by the contracts, signed between the City of Zagreb and the Institute. This meeting provided the RBI representatives with the opportunity to invite the Mayor and the City of Zagreb to actively engage in the organization of the Institute`s 60th anniversary in June 2010.

Springer Publishing Company has recently published a book Centromere-structure and evolution edited by the RBI scientist Đurđica Ugarkovic, PhD. The book was published within Progress in Molecular and Subcellular Biology series and comprises contributions by seven distinguished international research groups including the RBI group from the Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics.

Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) in cooperation with the Croatian Centre for Indigenous Species of Fish and Crawfish in Karstic Waters, Town of Otočac and Croatian Chamber of Economy, recently organized the 6th Scientific and Professional Conference on Autochthonous Karstic Species in Otočac. The Conference was held under the auspice of the President of the Republic of Croatia Mr. Stjepan Mesić.

RBI scientists Zvonimir Maksic, PhD, Ante Graovac, PhD, Nela Pivac, PhD, and Ivica Kopriva, PhD, were honoured with the 2008 National Science Award by the National Science Awards Committee at the Croatian Parliament meeting, held on 1 July 2009.

At the invitation of Director General Danica Ramljak, DVM, PhD, and Scientific Council of the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI), the Minister of Science, Education and Sports, Prof. Dragan Primorac, MD, PhD, visited the Institute today. The Minister has met with the representatives of the RBI governing bodies: the President of the RBI Board of Governors Prof. Slavko Krajcar, PhD, the RBI Scientific Council President Neven Bilic, PhD, as well as the division heads and representatives of RBI junior researchers.

The Croatian-Japanese Workshop on Advanced Materials Science will be held from 29 - 30 June at the Institute of Physics in Zagreb. This is the first joint workshop in the programme of cooperation between Croatia and Japan, jointly organized by the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the Institute of Physics, with the support of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport (MSES), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japanese embassy in Zagreb.

Head of Brookhaven Lab's Instrumentation Division and former RBI scientist, Veljko Radeka has been honoured with the prestigious Harold Wheeler award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) for 'the outstanding leadership and accomplishments in detector development which enabled discoveries in many areas of science and technology in a career of sustained productivity spanning over 50 years'.

Aleksandra Turković, PhD, Senior Research Associate in Division of Materials Physics, has recently been nominated in the Management Committee of the COST Action MP0701 Nanocomposite Materials, which joins 18 countries and 20 companies.

Ruđer Bošković Institute was proud to welcome an outstanding Croatian scientists and one of the leading world mathematicians in the group theory professor Zvonimir Janko, professor emeritus at the Mathematical Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany. On this occasion, professor Janko delivered a lecture in which he introduced listeners into the field of his current research - the theory of finite p-groups.