Computer Science Student Advancement Program – CSSAP

Computer Science Student Advancement Program (CSSAP) is a research program that offers a 3-month summer fellowship at Rice University Computer Science Department, Houston, TX, USA, for undergraduate students currently enrolled in a Computer Science program in Serbia.

Through this program, students get a first hand experience working on a word-class research project in an area of Computer Science of their interest. The students are placed in a dynamic environment, working closely with Rice University faculty members, Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. Most of the internship projects result in a research paper published in a leading scientific conference or journal, with the student one of the leading authors.

During the internship, the students are fully supported by the research project, and have an opportunity to interact with other CSSAP students that are participating in other projects, as well as experience the multicultural, diverse environment of Rice University and Houston Metropolitan area.

CSSAP was founded in 2013 and has so far hosted 28 students from University of Belgrade and University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Several of those students have enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Rice University after completing their internship and graduating from their University in Serbia.

SACCH signed an agreement with Rice University to provide logistics support for CSSAP student interns. To that end, CSSAP provides students with a visa affidavit needed to obtain a student visa in order to be authorized to work at Rice University. SACCH also purchases roundtrip airline tickets to Houston, signs apartment rental agreement for student housing, pays monthly rental and helps students with transportation to and from the airport. The portion of the monthly student stipend not spent on airplane ticket and monthly apartment rental is paid to students by SACCH. In addition to providing logistics assistance, SACCH also promotes cultural exchange by organizing events where student interns are exposed to Texas life and culture, and meet and greet members of Serbian community in Houston.

CSSAP 2013 Students


Tea Prokic

 

Equally so, the CSAP Program, dedicated to parallel computing and programming, has been able to help Tea learn latest scientific breakthroughs. “The opportunities to use new technologies and equipment, to work in a dynamic environment, take part in an innovative project, as well as learn from experts and cooperate with experienced people in computer science and information technologies are the benefits of this program” explains Tea.

Nonetheless, she is also able to enjoy working with experts and learning from them. “During this process, I have had an enormous help from my mentors, as well as from all the members of my team, who were wonderfully cooperative, making it easier for me to fit in. I would also like to express my gratitude to my mentors – Professor Vivek Sarkar and Dr. Zoran Budimlic – who have shown great understanding for my scientific curiosity” concluded Tea.

CSAP is a program that supports Serbian students who specialize in technological studies to broaden their knowledge by attending Rice University during summer semester.

This year, Rice University sponsored Tea Prokic as the only student with a possibility of opening doors to more students in the following year.

 

CSSAP 2014 Students

Jovan Stojanovic

Nevena Miletic

Jovan Stojanović is at his final year of master studies at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Signals and Systems, Subdivision Automation and Signal Processing. Jovan participated in Elektriada (International Science and Sport Games of Students of Electrical Engineering 2012 and 2013), Competition in Automatics, and he was Ranked first in both team and individual competition. After graduation, Jovan accepted an internship in Poland where he worked in the Religa Foundation of Cardiac Surgery. He made a small but relevant contribution for a Robinheart robot development.

Nevena Miletic graduated from the School of Electrical Engineering, Department of Computer Engineering and Information Theory. She is currently attending master studies. For the past year Nevena has been working as a Teacher Assistant. I came here as I got an exciting opportunity to do the research rather than just read about it. It is easy to work when you can potentially contribute answers to important questions about reality.

CSSAP 2015 Students

Branko Gvoka

Branko Gvoka is currently at his final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Novi Sad, specializing in “Electrical Engineering and Computer Science  – Information Systems”. He participated in several training seminars out of the country, summer schools, workshops and also helped to organize local events and seminars for foreign students at his faculty.

He was rewarded as the best participant at “EdIT – Education for Innovative Thinkers” summer school organized by Comtrade IT Solutions and Services. Because of his constant yearn in acquiring knowledge and skills, while studying, for the past year, Branko also worked as a part-time software developer in the company Execom from Novi Sad, Serbia, that specializes in “Custom software development”.

As part of Computer Science Student Advancement Program “CSAP”, Branko has opportunity to also work on one of his scientific interests – Distributed Systems and Parallel Computing at Rice University, mentored by Dr. Vivek Sarkar and Dr. Zoran Budimlic renowned research scientists, who they truly admire.

CSSAP 2016 Students

Srdjan Milakovic

Nikola Djuza

Dimitrije Jankov

 

Srdjan Milakovic

(2012 – ) University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, GPA: 9.61 (max 10.00)

Programming Skills

Advanced Knowledge of : C/C++, Java, Android development Basic Knowledge of: Assembly, JavaScript, Python, C#, MATLAB, Angular, iOS development

Spoken languages: Serbian, English – upper intermediate level

Other Interests: Physics, Mathematics, Sports

Nikola Djuza has a Computer science, Bachelor’s degree

I love playing with various Linux distributions. Favorite distro is elementaryOS. Interested in web development, design and cloud computing. Everything I make or do must look good besides working as it should. In my free time I enjoy doing yoga, watching MotoGP or exploring new technologies in programming world.

Dimitrije Jankov

I am a student at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, expected to graduate in the June of 2016 with the professional title Bachelor with Honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I have a exelent knowlege in software development, programming and mathematics, and I very excited about being in the CSAP this year.

 

CSSAP 2017 Students

Nives Kaprocki

Nemanja Milićević

Dragan Vidaković

Ljubica Vujovic

Kristijan Ziza

Vladimir Indjic

 

Nives Kaprocki is a Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering currently working as a firmware engineer in the Research and Development company RT-RK and as a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. She finished Grammar School Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj in Novi Sad, where she received a Goethe Institute scholarship for studying German and regularly hosted student literary events.  Nives attended Bachelor and Master studies at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, study program Computing and Control Engineering, and graduated with the highest marks. During her studies she was an active member of a non-governmental organization European Youth Parliament and participated in a Konrad Adenauer Foundation scholarship program for gifted students. In her free time she enjoys volunteering and practicing Yoga and Pilates.

Nemanja Milićević was born in 1994. in Trebinje. He grew up in Bileća, where he graduated from elementary and high school with honors. During elementary and high-school, he participated various competitions and won several prizes in mathematics, informatics, chess and karate.  Currently, he is student of final year of undergraduate studies at Faculty of Technical Sciences at University of Novi Sad, majoring in Applied Computer Sciences and Informatics with current GPA of 10.00/10.00. He won an award for Education Excellence for every year of his undergraduate studies. Nemanja participated an international competition for students from electrical engineering faculties. He is fellow of Foundation ‘dr Milan Jelić’ for talented students for 2016/17. Also, he finished Microsoft’s Machine Learning School held in Petnica research center and he is software engineering intern at Rendered Text in Novi Sad since third year of his undergraduate studies.

Dragan Vidaković was born on 21st February 1993 in Bijeljina, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He finished Elementary school in Janja and High school „Mihajlo Pupin“ in Bijeljina. During school time he participated in republic competitions in Physics and BiH olympiads in Informatics.  In 2012 he started Undergraduate Academic Studies of Computing and Control Engineering at Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. In 2016 he obtained Bachelor’s degree, finishing studies with GPA 9.70 of 10. After that, he started Master Academic Studies at the same study programme. During studies he won prizes on various hackathons. Since 2016, he works as a Teaching Associate at the Chair of Informatics. He’s the author of two scientific papers at international conferences.

During his free time, he enjoys sports (especially basketball), live concerts and explores the art of craft beer brewing process.

Ljubica Vujovic has graduated from University of Belgrade, Faculty of Electrical Engineering. She finished The First Grammar School in Kragujevac as best student in class and one of the greatest achievements was presenting Serbia at the International Science Junior Olympiad. During undergraduate studies, she was a student assistant at the Department for Applied Mathematics, Fundamental Elentrotechniques and Computer Science. She had received BAFA award for best student, Google Scholarship for Women in Computer Science and she had attended the first conference “Women in Trading and Technology”. Besides her interest in science, she was part of the debate section and drama studio.

Kristijan Ziza was born in Glina on the 3rd of September 1994, but he has lived in Belgrade since he was one year old. He finished Secondary School of Economics in Grocka with GPA 5.00/5.00 and was awarded the ‘Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic’ prize. After that he enrolled at School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Department of Software Engineering, which he graduated from in July 2017 with GPA 10.00/10.00. During all four years of studying he was awarded ‘The best student of Department’ prize, and in 2017 he started working as a Teaching Associate at the Chair of Computer Engineering and Information Theory. As a member of Regional Center for Talented Youth he won several prizes on regional and republic competitions in informatics, and since 2016 he is a scholar of Serbian Government’s Fund for Young Talents. He used to play chess professionally for 10 years.

Vladimir Inđić was born in Šabac on the 20th of February 1995. In his hometown, he finished primary school “Jevrem Obrenović” with the GPA 5.00/5.00 and was awarded “The Student of The Generation” prize. The same success he achieved as a student of Sabac Grammar School. He had extraordinary results at National Competitions in mathematics, physics and Serbian Language and Grammar. Currently, he is a third year student at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. He is attending a Computer Science program called Software Engineering and Information Technology with current a GPA of 10.00/10.00. He used to play basketball for 10 years. Also, he has been playing the guitar since 14.

CSSAP 2018 Students

Ana Conev

Peter Djekanovic

Sara Peric

Stefan Radonjic

Dejan Grubisic

Ivana Munjas

Nikola Jovanovic

 

Anja Conev is at her final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Information Technology. Besides the conventional education gained through her studies she has a background in the fields of biology and biochemistry.  She was involved in summer seminars at Petnica Science Center in Serbia where she conducted research and has published two papers in those fields. She later enrolled in the Machine Learning seminar organized by Microsoft Development Center Serbia there. She has also had experience in the industry through internships in different companies.

Petar Djekanovic is a third year undergraduate at the Department of Software Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. For the past two years he has been working as a teaching fellow at his faculty, where he helps other students and professors with their assignments. He has also managed to find time to contribute to few projects with experienced teams along with his regular school work. When he was younger, he participated in many competitions in various areas such as mathematics, physics and computer science, where he had opportunity to broaden his knowledge and incline his curiosity towards proper direction.

Sara Peric is at her final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Software Engineering and Informational Technologies Department. Because of her great interest in programming, Sara attended many workshops and courses as well as a 24-hour hackathon.  Sara was given Award of Achievement for Excellent Students of Novi Sad University for three successive school years from 2014 to 2017. In her 3rd year of studies, she accepted an internship at Execom, company from Novi Sad, Serbia. After successfully completing assigned project, she was offered a part-time job as a member of Execom’s mobile team, where she worked on mobile applications for more than a year, just before becoming part of the CSSAP family.

Stefan Radonjic is an undergraduate student at University of Novi Sad, specializing in “Applied Computer Science and Informatics”.  In the last couple of years Stefan has been collaborating with University of Novi Sad where he got offered a job as a teaching fellow at course – “Introduction to Operating Systems”.  Besides the time he spends working at University, Stefan is also conducting private lessons in various programming courses such as Computer’s Architecture, and C Programming Language & Data Structures, where he had over a hundred of satisfied students.  Fascinated by the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, Stefan has devoted most of his free time researching the field, and hoping that one day he would make an impact on it.

Dejan Grubisic got a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the Department for Embedded Systems and Algorithms in the University of Novi Sad. During his education he attended in several workshops like Fusion days, IDEA LAB, he participated two times in the Regional Competition for Electrical Engineering and he did an internship in institute IHP (Innovations for high performance microelectronics) in Germany as a part of a program of German government. He learned a lot of theoretical principles of computer’s architecture and execution of programs, but it was the right time to gain more practical experience. The program at Rice enabled him to enforce his knowledge and contribute to the real scientific project. This was both a challenge and an adventure with a lot of ideas and making codes. The cooperation at Rice was such a great experience, not only because of the wonderful working environment, but also because of the constant support of the people in the Chamber of Commerce, who have been providing a comfortable and pleasant stay.

Ivana Munjas finished her junior year at School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, department Signals and Systems. She participated in multiple workshops and competitions in the field of Computer Science and Signal Processing. For the past year she has been working as a teaching assistant at her school and did internship in the company Mikroelektronika.   Her main interests are Biomedical Engineering and Image Processing. After the experience of working in the industry, she wanted to try doing research and facing some non-standard problems. This program was a perfect blend between her wishes for doing something new and innovative concerning science, traveling and getting to know another culture and lifestyle.

Nikola Jovanovic is in his third year of Software Engineering studies at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. He is very active as an assistant in Petnica Science Center in Serbia, giving lectures to high school students in the field of computer science and participating in organization of seminars. Nikola also completed an internship in Microsoft Development Center Serbia, where he worked on high performance physics engines.  As a CSSAP participant, Nikola worked under professors Dr. Robert Cartwright and Dr. Krishna Palem on a project regarding climate and weather forecasting. While working on the project, Nikola had a chance to improve his skills in the fields of parallel computing and machine learning.

CSSAP 2019 Students

Tijana Jovanovic

Aleksa Simovic

Vladimir Vincan

Filip Mandic

Lazar M. Cvetkovic

Aleksandar Nikolic

Milica Skipina

Dusan Svilarkovic

 

Tijana Jovanovic is in her fourth year of undergraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, department Software Engineering. During her studies, she achieved excellent results and therefore worked as a student demonstrator in various courses such as Operating Systems, Computer Architecture and Objected and Oriented Programming as well as student mentor where she shared her experiences and knowledge with freshmen in order to help them get familiar with a new environment. For the last six months, she has been working as a junior software developer at CorewareLabs company in Belgrade. She shows great interest in parallel programming, and finds this program at Rice University as both challenging and inspirational. She enjoys travelling and dancing.

Aleksa Simovic is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the Department of Software Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. During his high school days, he had been highly ranked at national math’s competitions. He has been working as a student assistant at numerous courses related to programming, algorithms and data structures as well as computer architecture for three years. Previous summer, he participated in EDIT program in Comtrade, Belgrade, where he improved his knowledge related to blockchain technology. His main areas of interest include parallel computing and machine learning. During this program, he will be working with professor John Mellor-Crummey on improving HPCToolkit. He likes playing chess.

Vladimir Vincan is a fourth year bachelor student at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia, majoring in Embedded Engineering and Algorithms. During his studies, he was a student demonstrator in Impulse Electronics, participated at the international competition in robotics “Eurobot” in France, and won the Serbian national competition for best student business idea. He was awarded with the “dr Vladan Desnica” prize for best student at the Department of Electronics, and each year was given the Exceptional Award for Academic Achievement. Additionally, he attended several schools for professional education in machine learning, control theory, nuclear fusion and physics, and during summer worked at companies such as Keba and Microsoft Development Center Serbia. Besides his interest in studies, he plays bridge, skis and likes jogging.

Filip Mandic was born on November 26th 1996. in Belgrade. He is currently at his final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering at the department of Software Engineering. For the past three years he was very active as a student teaching assistant at his university, where he was helping students with their assignments and grading their work. Besides programming he developed an interest in the natural sciences and especially biology. Filip saw this program as a great opportunity to explore the field of computational cancer biology at the Rice University. He enjoys watching and playing sports, listening to music and playing board games.

Lazar M. Cvetković was born in 1997 in Kruševac, Republic of Serbia. He is currently a full-time undergraduate student at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering at the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Theory. During his school years, he has participated in numerous competitions in physics and informatics, Petnica Science Center and has been granted several scholarships home and abroad. His area of interests includes embedded systems, parallelization, real-time data processing. Aviation is one of his huge passions. During the stay in Houston, he participated in research in the area of distributed stream processing under the guidance of Konstantinos Mamouras, Ph.D. Lazar is fluent in English and has elementary proficiency in Italian and Greek. He also plays the piano and sings in a choir.

Aleksandar Nikolić has graduated from the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Software Engineering and Informational Technologies Studies. After that, he started Master Academic Studies in the same study program. Aleksandar was given Award of Achievement for Excellent Students of Novi Sad University for all four years of his undergraduate studies. For the past two years, he has been working as a part-time software developer at Execom, a company from Novi Sad, Serbia. During his studies, he attended many workshops and courses, and also participated and won prizes on various hackathons. As a CSAP participant, Aleksandar worked on a project regarding climate and weather forecasting where he improved his skills in the fields of parallel computing and machine learning.

Milica Skipina is in her third year of undergraduate studies at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Computing and Control Engineering. For the last two years, she has been helping students in coding tasks by working as a teaching fellow at the courses Computer Architecture and Operating Systems. In high school, she participated in many national competitions in mathematics, physics and computer science, and she was among the best in the Bosnia and Herzegovina. In her free time, she enjoys sports. She finds a very interesting area of machine learning and believes that this program is a great opportunity to improve her skills in this field.

Dušan Svilarković has recently graduated with a Bachelor in Electrical and Computing Engineering at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, specializing in Applied Computer Science and Informatics. During his study years he has participated in a Faculty work as a teaching assistant on courses of Compilers and Object Oriented Programming for two years. He has been on a Dean’s list for every year during his studies, and has received numerous awards like Faculty and University Excellence Scholarships, Scholarship for Youth Talents awarded by Ministry of Education, and Dositeja Scholarship by Ministry of Sport. He is interested in Machine Learning and Deep Learning implementations in Computer Vision, and thanks to this program is able to do that in a Computer Vision and Computational Imaging Lab at the Rice University with Ashok Veeraghavan and Anil Kumar Vadathya on problems regarding gaze estimation and face landmark localization.

CSSAP 2020 Students
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CSSAP program was cancelled for the 2020 year.
CSSAP 2021 Students
Aleksandar Gavric

Aleksandar Gavric

Radenko Pejic

Miljan Djordjevic

Balsa Knezevic

Dora Balog

Andrej Jakovljevic

Gojko Čutura

Maja Skoko

 

Aleksandar Gavric graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering degree with Honors in Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Nis, Faculty of Electronic Engineering. He is attending two Master’s programs, one in Computer Science at the School of Computing in Belgrade, and the other in Data Engineering at the University of Nis. He has received numerous awards, including the Serbian Academy of Science and Art Scholarships, the “Best Paper” award at the International IEEESTEC Conference, the “Best Application of IT in Entrepreneurship” award on Junior Achievements Competition, the gold medal at the international math competition IKMC, and the Best Undergraduate Thesis award. His current research interests broadly involve large-scale data analytics, devising neural network architectures and their applications, bioinformatics, cybersecurity, sensor networks, distributed systems, computer vision, and he strives to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals and medicine. He has conducted research on air pollution with Dr. Edward Knightly and Dr. Ahmed Boubrima, and on computational analysis of p-HLA structure with Dr. Lydia Kavraki. He plays drums, guitar, Cajon, ukulele, and piano.

Radenko Pejić was born in 1998 in Lajkovac, Serbia. He is currently in his final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering at the Department of Software Engineering. During his education, he has been involved in numerous projects involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), which are his major areas of interest. Attending seminars PSI:ML5 in Petnica Science Center and SPbPU at Sankt Peterburg helped him improve his knowledge in ML and AI. During his time at Rice University, he will assist Prof. Vaibhav Unhelkar in the application of AI in Robotics. Radenko is fluent in English and is proficient in Russian, German and French. Also, he likes sport fishing and water skiing.

Miljan Đorđević is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and Information Theory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. He worked as a student teaching assistant at his University, a Web developer at CSA Yazilim ve Danişmanık Hizmetleri, Istanbul, Turkey, and as a machine learning intern at Microsoft Development Center Serbia, in Belgrade. He likes to volunteer, taking part in organizing the thirteenth international documentary film festival Beldocs 2020 and the thirteenth international contemporary dance festival Kondenz 2020. He was also the Google Student Developer Club Lead for 2020/2021 at the GSDC University of Belgrade. He enjoys traveling and trying out new things.

Balsa Knezevic was born in 1997 in Kragujevac, Serbia. He graduated from the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering. During his studies, he participated in algorithm team contests like Bubble cup, ACM-ICPC, and was elected as a student Teaching Assistant at the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics. He was in a team that organized the national algorithm competition Algo Cup Serbia. He started working as a Teaching Associate at the Chair of Computer Engineering and Informatics. Besides his interests in science, he likes to play basketball.

Dora Balog is in her final year of undergraduate studies majoring in Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia. During her sophomore year, she spent a semester studying in Germany as an Erasmus+ student, where she did two faculty internships and perfected her language skills. Dora is very passionate about her research interests, which include machine learning, image processing, optimization algorithms and system modeling. She uses her acquired skills to work on real-life medical issues. This year she and her partner won third place in the European Finals of Schneider Electric’s GoGreen student competition with their innovative idea of a sustainable electronic tattoo that could track lung capacity. Dora is also a core member of the Biomedical Engineering Science Club in Novi Sad. In her free time, she likes to challenge herself in business-related internships and hackathons.

Andrej Jakovljevic is currently a 3rd year student at the School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, Serbia, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering. Before that, he was attending Mathematical Grammar School in Belgrade, where he competed in Programming and Physics on a national level and finished high school with the highest possible grades. He is currently a student teaching assistant on multiple computer science related subjects at his university, including Operating Systems, Databases and Computer Architecture. Andrej won ‘Best student in the department’ two years in a row. He will be working under Prof. Budmlic during his stay at Rice University, developing and improving programming packages which make data more accessible to anyone who needs it. Andrej likes science fiction books, trivia, and video games.

Gojko Čutura was born on the 5th of July 1997 in Belgrade, Serbia. He recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, Signals and Systems Department, where he is currently enrolled in Master’s studies. His academic interests are  machine learning, deep learning and signal processing. For the past eight months, he has been working as an embedded software engineer at RT-RK Automotive in Belgrade, as a part of their Convolutional Neural Networks team. During the CSSAP 2020 program, he was conducting research on graph signal processing and graph neural networks, under the guidance of Dr. Santiago Segarra. This resulted in a research paper co-written with Boning Li and Ananthram Swami, titled “Deep Demixing: Reconstructing The Evolution of Epidemics Using Graph Neural Networks”, which was accepted to the EUSIPCO 2021 conference. Gojko’s hobbies are mostly centered around sports, primarily basketball. Since his second year of studies, he has been playing shooting guard for his Faculty’s basketball team.

Maja Skoko is a Master’s student at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, department Software Engineering. After the CSSAP program she plans to continue her studies at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Master program in Computer Science. During her studies, she has been working as a student demonstrator in various courses such as Operating Systems, Algorithms and Data structures, Objected and Oriented Programming etc. Maja also completed an internship in the Microsoft Development Center Serbia, where she worked in Unity on Data Oriented Tech Stack, as well as in Saga, where she worked on categorization of bank transactions. At Rice University, Maja will work in Computer Vision and Computational Imaging Lab with Prof. Ashok Veeraghavan. She believes that this program is a great opportunity to work on real scientific projects and is an  excellent chance to improve her skills.

CSSAP 2022 Students

Dragana Grbić

Milena Kovačević

Jelena Lazić

Bojan Radojčić

Andreja Andrejić

Dora Živanović

Ana Mako

Viktor Katzenberger

 

Dragana Grbić has graduated from the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Software Engineering and Information Technologies in June 2021 with a final GPA of 10.00/10.00. She finished master studies at the same faculty and same module in June 2022 with a final GPA of 10.00/10.00. Dragana received the Award of Achievement for Excellent Students of Novi Sad University for all four years of her studies, as well as Scholarship for Youth Talents by the Ministry of Education and Dositeja Scholarship by the Ministry of Sport. For the past year and a half, during her studies, she has been working as a full-time software developer at DunavNET, a company from Novi Sad, where she became highly experienced in web development, mobile development and IoT. After the experience of working in the industry, she wanted to face new challenges and try doing research, so she saw the program at Rice University as a great opportunity to explore the field of High-Performance Computing and Programming Massively Parallel Processors.

Milena Kovačević was born in Belgrade in 1998. She is a masters student and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad in computer science subjects. During her undergraduate studies, she was helping students with coding assignments by working as a teaching assistant for Objective Programming course. She has been passionate about programming since middle school. Besides studying, she loves playing sports, especially volleyball, skiing, dancing and playing board games.

Jelena Lazić is a Masters student at the University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, department of Signals and Systems. During her studies, she has worked as a teaching assistant at her University, as well as at Ibis Solutions in the Robotic Process Automation department, where she was involved in the automation of repetitive software processes in IT, banks, and other industries. During her high school years, she competed in many math and physics competitions, while also tutoring high school students. Considering that she has been very passionate about science since participating in the mathematics and physics seminars at the Petnica research center, she believes that the research internship at Rice University is a great opportunity to enhance her professional knowledge and cultural experience.

Bojan Radojičić is a third year student at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad in the field of Information and Financial Engineering with excellent grades. His major is  Computer Science, with a focus on Data Science and Finance. He received awards at AIBG programming competition in Novi Sad in the field of Artificial Intelligence, where he and his team won second place in 2021 and first place in 2022. Apart from Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Bojan is also interested in the fields of Finance and Management, and he is currently doing a professional internship at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Serbia. Bojan stands out for his membership in numerous student organizations and volunteering, such as volunteering at the Volunteer Center of Vojvodina and membership in the Erasmus Student Network, where he works with students from abroad. His hobbies are sports, movies, cars and psychology.

Andreja Andrejić was born in Belgrade, Serbia where he is currently in his final year as a Software Engineering student at the School of Electrical Engineering. He has received multiple awards in the National Mathematics Competition throughout high school. He is teaching assistant at university, tasked wit helping students and grading their lab assignments. He had worked at a startup company in Belgrade on a machine learning project, specifically deep learning, which is his biggest interest. He is fluent in English, competent in German and is currently taking up Spanish. He loves art in all its shapes, perhaps cinema and music above other forms, as he has been also making hip hop music since 2020. He played different sports up until college, with the highlight being a professional handball goalkeeper in Serbia during his last two years at high school.

Dora Živanović was born in Belgrade in 1999. She is currently a fourth year student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade enrolled in the course of Signals and Systems. Her main fields of interest are Pattern Recognition and Signal Analysis, both in the image and audio department. In her free time, she enjoys music and dancing salsa. As part of the CSSAP program, which will be her first academic internship, she will be researching the field of TeraHerz Networks, in collaboration with Zhambyl Shaikhanov and under the supervision of professor Edward Knightly.

Ana Mako is a 2nd year undergraduate student at University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering. She is a student in the Computer Engineering and Information Theory department and the topics she is mostly interested in are machine learning, deep learning and cybersecurity. She won ‘Best student in the department’ in her first year and participated in a Hackaton. In her third academic year, she plans to work as teaching assistant. Outside of university she is reading sci-fi books and books related to topics such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Viktor Katzenberger was born in 1999 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Having enrolled at the University of Belgrade in 2018, he is a fourth year student, majoring in Software Engineering. During his studies, he completed a few research internships at Microsoft Development Center in Serbia and Oracle Labs. His interests include learning languages, playing the guitar and the piano (although not very well), snowboarding and skateboarding. He is set to work at Rice University with professor Vaibhav Unhelkar researching new machine learning methods, as well as the novel field of machine teaching, which he is very excited about.

CSSAP 2023 Students

CSSAP 2024 Students

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