Blaž ZUPAN

Dr. Blaž Zupan has been working on machine learning seemingly forever. He heads the bioinformatics lab at the University of Ljubljana and is a visiting professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. His research has focused on constructive induction, machine learning, and epistasis approaches to reconstruct gene networks, large-scale data fusion, and algorithms to propose informative data visualizations. He believes that crafting simple tools that anybody can use to understand data is essential to advancing humanity and democracy. His lab developed Orange (http://orangedatamining.com), a fully open-source, ever-evolving data mining suite with a visual programming environment. He also enjoys writing scripts for YouTube videos to explain data science (check out http://youtube.com/orangedatamining) and preparing courses that introduce data science.

With dr. Janez Demšar, Zupan leads the development of Orange, a data mining tool that features interactive visualizations, visual programming, and intuitive interface. Orange is daily used worldwide by thousands of data miners.

1968 Born in Postojna, Slovenia

1991 Degree, majoring on cellular automata for modelling of wound healing, University of Ljubljana

1993 Master’s, University of Houston, Computer Science

1997 PhD on constructive induction, University of Ljubljana

1997 Assistant professor, University of Ljubljana

2000 Visiting professor, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA

2008 Visiting professor, University of Pavia, Italy

2009 Full professor, University of Ljubljana

2010 Chair, Bioinformatics Lab, University of Ljubljana

Important Works

Zitnik M, Zupan B (2015) Data fusion by matrix factorization. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 37(1):41-53.

Juvan P, Demsar J, Shaulsky G, Zupan B (2005) GenePath: from mutations to genetic networks and back, Nucleic Acids Research 33: W749-W752.

Zupan B, Bohanec M, Demsar J, Bratko I (1999) Learning by discovering concept hierarchies. Artificial Intelligence 109:211-242.

Selected Awards

2008, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 student’s best teacher award, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer Science

2016 New Europe 100 Challenger - Changemakers in Central and Eastern Europe, by Visegrad Found, Google and Finantial Times

2013 Fullbright Scholarship

2011 Gold Plaque, University of Ljubljana

2010 Zois Distinction

1999 The Jožef Stefan Golden Emblem