27TH DAYS OF J. STEFAN

27TH DAYS OF J. STEFAN

Each year since 1993, at the end of March, the Institute has organised the Days of Jožef Stefan, with the aim being to popularise science and to celebrate the birthday of this great Slovenian physicist. This year, the 70th anniversary of the Institute will be celebrated.

Programme 2019

Saturday, March 23, 2019 - OPEN DAY OF THE INSTITUTE

In front of the main building, Jamova cesta 39, 9:00am-2:00pm
You are kindly invited to attend the Open Day at the Jožef Stefan Institute, where you will learn more about the research work at the Institute and at the same time researchers will present activities of research departments and show interesting experiments. Visitors are invited to gather at the main entrance of the Jožef Stefan Institute (Jamova cesta 39) at full hour (9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am, 12:00pm (noon) and 1:00pm) and select and view one of the prepared programmes of laboratory visits in duration of one hour. You may select from 1) Matter-Robotics, 2) Biology-Chemistry-Physics, 3) Intelligence-Systems-Materials-Environment. At the same time, workshops "School of experimental chemistry" will also be organised, which enables visitors to directly participate in experiments. At full hour (at 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am, 12:00pm (noon), 1:00pm, 2:00pm - when the bus will go to pick up visitors from Reactor Center where the last tour ends at 2:30pm) a free of charge transportation (departure from Jamova cesta 39) will be organized for the visit to the Reactor Center, where the tours are organized by the Nuclear Training Center (ICJT). At the Reactor Center visitors will be able to visit (at 9:30am, 10:30am, 11:30am, 12:30pm and 1:30pm - last tour) one of the Slovenian accelerators, the Laboratory of the Department of Environmental Sciences, the exhibition on nuclear technology, the research nuclear reactor Triga, and the Energy efficiency centre.

Monday, March 25, 2019

INVITED LECTURE: COMRADESHIP OR HOW TO FEEL LIKE A FISH IN THE WATER
Mrs. Zdenka Badovinac, Director of Modern Gallery, Ljubljana — Short Biography
Great Hall, at 13.00
The comradeship can be found in various art groups that formed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and some of them still operate today. IRWIN is one of these longest-serving groups, since it was founded in 1983, and as one of its main guides, asked the question: How to work together? The lecturer will discuss how important her work was originally marked by the environment, where comradeship was a value that surpassed only common interests and also meant solidarity and the ethics that brought it together. The work is reproduced in her book, which was published by ICI (New York) and entitled Comradeship-Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe.

OPENING 27TH JOŽEF STEFAN DAYS

EXHIBITION: IRWIN: NSK GUARDS AND PROCESSIONS
Introductory address: Prof. Jadran Lenarčič, Director J. Stefan Institute
Honorary address: President of the Republic of Slovenia Mr. Borut Pahor
Gallery of the Institute, at 14.00
The NSK state came into being in 1992 as a result of the transformation of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) collective into the NSK State in Time. The collective was formed in 1984 by three founding groups – IRWIN, Laibach and the Gledališče sester Scipion Nasice theatre group. Although each group was autonomous in its activities, they shared belief in collaboration, free flow of ideas, declarative copy-left, mutual assistance and engaged in joint planning of particular moves and actions. With the collapse of socialism in the beginning of the 1990s and the subsequent disintegration of Yugoslavia, the conditions of artistic activity changed radically as well. Along with the emergence of a multitude of new states, some of which, among them Slovenia, achieved the status of an independent state for the first time ever in history, NSK too objectified itself in the form of a state. Instead of to a territory, however, NSK assigned the status of its state to thinking, which alters its boundaries in accordance with the movements and changes of its symbolic and physical collective body. In the year 2017, NSK State participated for the first time with its pavilion at the Venice Biennial of Visual Arts, the oldest and largest such event in the world, along with more then sixty countries from all over the world.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

INVITED LECTURE: WILL LIFE GO LIFE ONE DAY?
Prof. Bart De Moor, KU Leuven, Belgium — Short Biography
Great Hall, at 12.00
Both physics and biology are characterized by tremendous progress and breakthroughs. We witnessed the birth of the theories of general relativity, quantum mechanics and the first attempts to design a Grand Unifying Theory, each of them deeply rooted in a ‘quasi-platonic’ belief in the consistency of mathematics. The invention of the transistor triggered an exponential proliferation of technology that has been tremendously beneficial for society. Similarly, in biology, we start understanding the basic mechanisms of life and its Darwinian evolution. Through mathematics and technology, biology has become an information driven discipline facing a tsunami of data, providing us with a better understanding of health and disease. Gradually, we start designing life and living organisms. In this talk, I will explore three utopian visions. 1. One day, we will truly ‘understand’ the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics. 2. One day, we will design and build life from scratch. 3. One day, we will build artificial brains with emerging consciousness.

INVITED LECTURE: MITOCHONDRIA CALCIUM SIGNALLING IN CELL LIFE AND DEATH
Prof. Rosario Rizzuto, Rector University of Padua, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Italy — Short Biography
Great Hall, at 13.30
The Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter (MCU) mediates Ca2+ transport inside the organelle matrix, thus shaping global calcium signals and controlling either aerobic metabolism or cell death through apoptosis. The molecular elucidation and in vivo targeting of the MCU complex is now revealing new information on the role of mitochondrial Ca2+ signaling in health and disease.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

70th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CEREMONY OF J. STEFAN INSTITUTE

WELCOME SPEECH: Prof. Jadran Lenarčič, Director J. Stefan Institute
HONORARY SPEECH: Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Mr. Marjan Šarec
INVITED LECTURE ON FLYING ROBOTS: Prof. Vijay Kumar, Dean of Eng., Penn University, USA — Short Biography
GOLDEN AWARDS of J. STEFAN
Linhart Hall, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, at 7 p.m. - ENTRY WITH THE TICKET

Thursday, March 28, 2019

INVITED LECTURE: 4D PRINTING AND BIO-PRINTING: THE "MASS" IS NOT YET OVER!
Prof. Jean-Claude André, LRGP-UMR 7274 CNRS-UL and INSIS-CNRS, 3, rue Michel-Ange - F75016 Paris 1, rue Grandville – F54000 Nancy, France — Short Biography
Great Hall, at 12.00
The author was the first who patented 3D printing in 1984, based on the voxel by voxel addition of a selected material to a complex structure under construction. Since then, fabrication paradigms advanced so that it is nowadays possible to modify the shape of the objects created in one or more potential fields by modifying the environment. This defines the basic idea of 4D printing and of Bio-printing, which is, in simple words, 4D printing of living things. The lecture will deal with what these emerging technologies represent. It will emphasize their current limits and underpin few ways to break current scientific barriers (complexity), teleology, epistemology and flexible organization in a context where results must be obtained as quickly as possible. The period of “simple” ideas, like for 3D printing in 1984, is over.

Friday, March 29, 2019

PRESENTATION: WINNER OF THE DIRECTOR'S FUND FOR 2019
Great Hall, at 12.00
The Director's Council of the Jožef Stefan Institute announces a Call for Proposals for the Director's Fund projects, which focuses on purchasing and/or developing a new research infrastructure (as part of an internal investment project) with the aim being to facilitate and enable the creation of promising new research areas for younger generations of researchers. Either one or two proposals will be selected on the basis of a comprehensive evaluation process. The Director's Fund is dedicated to the purchase and construction of a research infrastructure in the framework of an investment project that is submitted by young scientists up to 7 years after the completion of their doctoral degree, i.e., during the period when they have already proven their talent for research and when they decide to continue their research career at the Institute.

INVITED LECTURE: THE TECH GIANTS ARE HARVESTING YOUR DATA. SHOULD YOU CARE?
Prof. Geoff Webb, Monash University, Australia — Short Biography
Great Hall, at 13.30
Technology giants Google and Facebook are the most visible exemplars of a new generation of business that profit by collecting and exploiting masses of data on individual citizens. This talk will explain what these companies do and explore the implications. It will revisit the infamous Cambridge Analytica case, dissecting what happened and how, as well as the ensuing social and ethical implications. Amongst other issues, it will discuss whether the concept of privacy as we have known it is obsolete, and whether abuses of big data are a major risk to democracy.

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