Project 1

The aim of this course is to develop students’ capacity to work in interdisciplinary project teams, and to upgrade in practice their knowledge and skills needed for problem solving in engineering and management.

Students will acquire the following competences:

• Ability to find and understand relevant examples of good practice for a selected topic, and to critically assess their potential usability in the context of the project task,

-Ability to acquire missing information and specific knowledge in the field of engineering and management, connected with the specific context of the project task;

-Ability of solving real interdisciplinary problems in a team,

-Ability to present their project in a written form and orally, and to discuss about the project and its topics with professional and other interested audience.

Students should have knowledge acquired during the courses Introduction to modern technological systems and Economics for Engineers. Students should be prepared to work in teams.

During the course students will be solving a spe-cific problem in the field of engineering and man-agement. Through the practical work, students will learn about the principles of project manage-ment and project group work. The problem will be complex enough to require an interdisciplinary approach and teamwork. Every year, a new pro-ject task will be carefully selected on the basis of real problems in specific environments (compa-nies, organizations, local communities) and will require concrete solutions with practical value.

Study process will consist of the following phas-es:

1. Introduction
   - Presentation of course objectives
   - Instructions for project work

2. Project set-up
   - Project task presentation
   - Project team organization

3. Detailed project work plan
   - Project coordination and means of work
   - The division of work
   - Determination of the phases of the project
   - Time Plan
   - Discussion and Consultations

4. Teamwork
   - Problem-solving for the project task and coordination
   - Regular (online) meetings with presentation of intermediate results
   - Discussion and Consultations

5. Final report
   - Preparation of a written report
   - Preparing for a public presentation
   - Consultations
   - Public presentation

6. Final analysis of the project
   - Critical evaluation of project results
   - Evaluation of the workflow
   - Summary of experience – Lessons learned

After the end of the course, students will have

• Knowledge about basic principles of project management, and know how to act as a re-sponsible member of a team;

• Skills how to acquire additional knowledge and information needed for solvong a concrete complex problem from engineering and man-agement, connected to the project task;

• Knowledge about group dynamics within the project team;

• Ability to communicate about open issues in an efficient and assertive way;

• Enhanced ability to critically evaluate their personal contribution to the results of the team.

To prepare for the project work:

R. Newton: The Theory and Practice of Project Management: Creating Value Through Change. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN 978‐0‐230‐53667‐8

Due to the nature of the subject other literature is not prescribed in advance. It is determined each year and for each group according to the contents of selected projects by mentors. Additional sources are found by students with a help of their mentors as a part of the study process.

Descriptive grades »pass« and »fail« are used. The elements contributing to the assessment include monitoring of project developments and deliverables, including capabilities for project communication and management of group dynamics, with elements of peer- and self-evaluation, interim presentations, written report and final presentation of project results with discussion.

Prof. Dr. Aneta Trajanov (former Trajanov), Associate professor in the field of computer sience and informatics at the University of Nova Gorica and a director of the Master programme Management and engineering, is an expert in the area of artificial intelligence. She completed her PhD on machine learning in 2010 at the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School. From 2005 until 2022 she was a researcher at the Department of Knowledge Technologies at the Jozef Stefan Institute. She completed her post-doc at the Ruđer Boškovič Institute, Zagreb, Croatia in 2015/2016. Her main research interests are machine learning and knowledge discovery from environmental data, decision support, inductive logic programming and equation discovery. She has worked on many European, as well as national, projects in the area of agroecology, where she applied different machine learning methods for analysing (agro)ecological data.
Since November 2022 she works as a Director of Artificial Intelligence in the company MarineXchange, which develops software for the cruise industry.

Selected bibliography

1. SANDÉN, Taru, WAWRA, Anna, BERTHOLD, Helene, MILOCZKI, Julia, SCHWEINZER, Agnes, GSCHMEIDLER, Brigitte, SPIEGEL, Heide, DEBELJAK, Marko, TRAJANOV, Aneta. TeaTime4Schools : using data mining techniques to model litter decomposition in austrian urban school soils. Frontiers in ecology and evolution. 2021, vol. 9, str. 703794-1-703794-9, ilustr. ISSN 2296-701X. DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.703794. [COBISS.SI-ID 68232707]
2. IANNETTA, Pietro, DEBELJAK, Marko, TRAJANOV, Aneta, et al. A multifunctional solution for wicked problems : value-chain wide facilitation of legumes cultivated at bioregional scales is necessary to address the climate-biodiversity-nutrition nexus. Frontiers in sustainable food systems. 2021, vol. 5, str. 692137-1-692137-8. ISSN 2571-581X. DOI: 10.3389/fsufs.2021.692137. [COBISS.SI-ID 72049155]
3. WALL, David P., DELGADO, Antonio, O'SULLIVAN, Lilian, CREAMER, Rachel, TRAJANOV, Aneta, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, HENRICKSEN, Christian B., DEBELJAK, Marko. A decision support model for assessing the water regulation and purification potential of agricultural soils across Europe. Frontiers in sustainable food systems. 2020, vol. 4, str. 115-1-115-11. ISSN 2571-581X. DOI: 10.3389/fsufs.2020.00115. [COBISS.SI-ID 21854979]
4. SANDÉN, Taru, TRAJANOV, Aneta, SPIEGEL, Heide, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, SABY, Nicolas, PICAUD, Calypso, HENRIKSEN, Christian B. H., DEBELJAK, Marko. Development of an agricultural primary productivity decision support model : a case study in France. Frontiers in environmental science. 2019, vol. 7, str. 58-1-58-13. ISSN 2296-665X. DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2019.00058. [COBISS.SI-ID 32342311],
5. LEEUWEN, Jeroen P. van, DEBELJAK, Marko, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, TRAJANOV, Aneta, et al. Modeling of soil functions for assessing soil quality : soil biodiversity and habitat provisioning. Frontiers in environmental science. 2019, vol. 7, str. 113-1-113-13. ISSN 2296-665X. DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2019.00113. [COBISS.SI-ID 32581927]
6. DEBELJAK, Marko, TRAJANOV, Aneta, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, et al. A field-scale decision support system for assessment and management of soil functions. Frontiers in environmental science. 2019, vol. 7, str. 115-115-14. ISSN 2296-665X. DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2019.00115. [COBISS.SI-ID 32549671]
7. VAN DE BROEK, Marijn, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, TRAJANOV, Aneta, DEBELJAK, Marko, et al. Assessing the climate regulation potential of agricultural soils using a decision support tool adapted to stakeholders' needs and possibilities. Frontiers in environmental science. 2019, vol. 7, str. 131-1-131-17. ISSN 2296-665X. DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2019.00131. [COBISS.SI-ID 32644391]
8. TRAJANOV, Aneta, SPIEGEL, Heide, DEBELJAK, Marko, SANDÉN, Taru. Using data mining techniques to model primary productivity from international long-term ecological research (ILTER) agricultural experiments in Austria. Regional environmental change. 2019, vol. 19, no. 3, str. 325-337. ISSN 1436-3798. DOI: 10.1007/s10113-018-1361-3. [COBISS.SI-ID 31437607]
9. BAMPA, Francesca, TRAJANOV, Aneta, DEBELJAK, Marko, et al. Harvesting European knowledge on soil functions and land management using multi%criteria decision analysis. Soil use and management. 2019, vol. 35, no. 6, spec. iss., str. 6-20. ISSN 0266-0032. DOI: 10.1111/sum.12506. [COBISS.SI-ID 32292903]
10. TRAJANOV, Aneta, KUZMANOVSKI, Vladimir, RÉAL, Benoît, MARKS PERREAU, Jonathan, DŽEROSKI, Sašo, DEBELJAK, Marko. Modeling the risk of water pollution by pesticides from imbalanced data. Environmental science and pollution research international. [Print ed.]. 2018, vol. 25, no. 19, str. 18781-18792. ISSN 0944-1344. DOI: 10.1007/s11356-018-2099-7. [COBISS.SI-ID 31356967]