Record on the occasion of the Vidmar Prize

At the end of 2021, it was a great honour for me to receive the prize for my comprehensive teaching work, named after an all-round great man - academic Prof. Dr. Milan Vidmar. When I heard about the award, which is given to teachers of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering for imparting knowledge, mentoring and extra-curricular work with students, my thoughts first drifted back through the years to find the answer to what had really earned it for me. What makes me stand out is that I was nominated by the Chair of Information and Communication Technologies and selected by the Senate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

My memory first stopped on all my pedagogical mentors to guide me on my teaching path. First and foremost to my bachelor and master mentor, the late Prof. Jožek Budin, whose farewell letter still echoes in my head. Then to my doctoral mentor, Prof. Matjaž Vidmar, who always approaches me with the sincerity and knowledge of a giant. Of course, there are all those who have been my mentors and role models without realising it. Last but not least, my thoughts of gratitude go out to all my past and present colleagues and students, without whom I would not have been able to gather the achievements mentioned in the explanatory memorandum in such numbers.

Although the very famous rock musician and poet of beautiful ballads subtly sings in one of his (lesser-known) songs that only stones do not change shape, but all the rest of us do, it is a well-known fact that water in a stream turns all the stones white over time. At the source, they are of varied shapes, with pronounced corners and edges. Over time, the hardness remains, but the sharp corners and edges are gone.

I came to study in Ljubljana in the autumn after the War of Independence from the small village of Kamnje on the slopes of the Vipava Valley. Like a true Kamenc, I had very distinct and sharp features. After all these years, I hope that time has not yet wiped them all away and that I still have some left to demystify the fifth generation (5G) and other technologies to the wider masses, to fight the untruths that fake activists spread among us, to break the information bubbles on social networks and to explain in a tolerant and reasoned way how technology works and what relevance it has for human development. Winning the Vidmar Prize gives me hope that after all this time, I am not left with a rounded hardness that cannot be reasoned with and only stubbornly rolls in the wrong direction.

Today, as university professors, we need to be aware that our students are not only in the lecture halls and laboratories of the faculty, but also outside them. They are perhaps even more knowledge-hungry and curious. That is why we need to organise professional seminars, educational lectures and, every now and then, publish a popular article in the daily newspapers. In addition to all the scientific and professional publications, we need to write at least once a year something in the vernacular to educate the general public or to disseminate our knowledge to the public.

I am often asked by people outside the university, and there is an American professor among them, how it is possible that I have not tired of teaching the same subjects all these years: optical communications, radio communications, satellite and navigation systems. I explain to them that only the titles of the courses are the same. The content changes and is updated and supplemented. The students in the lecture theatre are different. At the beginning, their electrical charge and mine are different, we oscillate in different phases. But in the end, the ripples between us catch on the same resonant frequency and give birth to a multitude of new ideas, solutions, even friendships. Every year on a different resonant frequency. Each time I feel like I am giving a lecture for the first time. I hope to keep this feeling for many years to come.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Boštjan Batagelj

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