Zoran Škoda, associate professor (mathematics), Department of Teachers’ Education, University of Zadar
This is a start page for my professional information.
my articles– most scientific articles which I wrote sufficiently finished to be made public (including all published ones)
University of Zadar, dept webpage, faculty data
my profile at the University of Zagreb, Department of Mathematics, postgraduate program https://www.pmf.unizg.hr/images/50022942/Zoran%20Skoda.pdf
www2.irb.hr/korisnici/zskoda – old web page (partly updated) at Institute Ruđer Bošković
talks– invited and contributed talks at conferences, and the invited seminars at institutions; this does not include regular seminars at my own institutions
orcid/0000-0002-8415-1732
mathlight scientific blog (low activity)
zbMath reviewer 12580
My undergraduate degree is the diploma in physics from the University of Zagreb. I was awarded M.A. in mathematics in 1998 and defended my Ph.D. in (mathematical) physics on Jan 17, 2002, both from University of Wisconsin at Madison, with thesis “Coset spaces for quantum groups” under my PhD advisor Joel W. Robbin from the mathematics department (and physics coadvisor was A. Chubukov). During the PhD program, I have been employed as a teaching assistant for various courses in physics, mathematics or computer science, depending on a semester and one semester a research assistant in physical chemistry. Outside of my main direction in mathematical physics I have been following extensive coursework also in linguistics, both computational and historical as well as in compilers/programming language/AI. I followed a number of graduate/research seminars and informal reading/journal groups, especially those focused on geometry/topology and mathematical physics.
I worked at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) in Spring 2002.
I worked at Indiana University at Bloomington as a visiting assistant professor of mathematics in Fall 2002 and then stayed there as a Visiting Scholar in Spring 2003, until my return to Europe. V. Lunts was my host and collaborator there. In May 2003, I enjoyed participating in algebra trimester at Sapienza and the workshop they organized in Cortona, visited CATS3 conference at Nice in early June.
In July 2003 I joined the Theoretical Physics Division of the Institute Ruđer Bošković, Zagreb as a postdoctoral assistant in theoretical physics. I was on unpaid leave of absence from Fall 2003 till July 2004, visiting Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and IHÉS, Bures sur Yvette; during the stay at IHÉS I also attended the noncommutative geometry semester at l’Institute Henri Poincare in Paris. MPI and IHÉS are the highest excellence institutes for mathematics and mathematical physics in Europe and really pleasant places to do science. Upon return from IHÉS in late July 2004, I stayed at IRB for few more years, an initial position with several extensions and occasionally interrupted with visits to conferences and research stays at other places (including some returns to MPI and IHÉS). More recently, I held several short visiting positions or project involvements in Lisbon, Prague, Swansea etc. and as adjunct assistant professor I thought 6 doctoral topics courses in geometry and topology at the Mathematics Department of the University of Zagreb (2008-2018, with pauses, adds up to 11 semesters of teaching).
In May 2015 I have been elected into the scientific title of senior research associate in mathematics within Croatian academic system. In 2016 the lower scientific title of research associate in physics has also been confirmed.
From 2015 I have also had part time research involvement (in the title of part time associate professor) supported by the Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. From early 2018, I am a member in a 3-year project of the Czech Science Foundation based in Hradec. From October 1, 2018, I am also a member of a 4-year physics project GRASP based on Ruđer Bošković Institute and granted by Croatian Science Foundation.
From Spring 2016, I work full-time at the Department of Teachers’ Education, University of Zadar where I am currently an associate professor. In 2019/2020 academic year I am at unpaid leave to spend more time doing research and writing papers. First 3 months of this leave I have spent at IHES, and this Spring I planned to spend several months in Hradec, but due covid restrictions from Mid March, as a foreigner, I could not reside in dormitory in Hradec and had to return home at the very beginning of my scientific journey in March.
In Summer/Fall 2018 I also revived some of my old interests in cognitive science and computer science collaborating with colleagues around the engibot project on a data collecting platform about engagement (including using bots). In my view of the projection, I envisioned a machine learning modelling based on theoretically generated pretraining data and collected personal data on engagement and in some future versions ensuring sharing, permissioning and persistence based on cryptography and bookkeeping hashes of engagement data (and sometimes the very encrypted data) on a blockchain. However, the blockchain topic, which I follow from 2017, overtook the whole project as immediately more interesting. In this line of activity, I am now primarily interested in developing protocols ensuring realization of critical off-chain effects of smart contracts, extending their applicability. After intense activity in 2018/2019, I have placed the technical side of this project to a secondary place again in September 2019, returning more to my previous research topics. In 2022, I plan however to return to the question of placing the realistic blockchain systems in real world (blockchain for societal needs) and I currently apply for a grant in this area.
In February 2019, I became a member of the editorial board of Journal of Global Education and Research (JGER ISSN 2577-509X (online), ISSN 2577-5081 (print)) (an assistant editor for the subject education in other specialties (physics,mathematics)). JGER is published bi-annually by Association of North American Higher Education International (ANAHEI). It is NOT a predatory journal; in fact it is an academically lead and issued, it does not collect fees from authors and the online version is free for everybody. JGER is in its early phase of development (the first issue appeared in 2017; currently applying for inclusion in Scopus), gradually improving in quality and impact.
Oct 1-Dec 31, 2019, I have spent at IHES mostly working on noncommutative fibre bundles and descent in noncommutative algebraic geometry, extending my previous work partly in collaboration with M. Stojić who was also a guest at the same time.
On Dec 8, 2020, I have been elected into a title of Senior Scientist in Mathematics (it is sort of habilitation title in Croatian scientific system, which is a prerequisite for the working positions of a senuor scientist or a full professor in the system).
Last revised on August 12, 2023 at 10:11:32. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.