Prof. Mario Kovac is full professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is also an executive, author and expert in the field of multimedia hardware and software design, business models for computer systems, chip architecture design and HPC.
In 1990 and 1991 he received a VLSI and Computer Architecture Scholarship at the University of South Florida, and he subsequently received the Fulbright Award in 1993.
He holds several US patents including U.S. Patent 5,659,362 for a VLSI circuit structure for implementing the JPEG image compression standard, among others.
In 2008, Croatian President awarded him with the Medal of Honor “Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Ruđer Bošković” for special merit in science.
Professor Kovač served as Head of the Dept. of Control and Computer Engineering and Vice Dean for Business Development at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is/was a member of the supervisory boards of Croatian agencies/companies CARNet, HIT - Croatian Institute of Technology and BICRO - Business Innovation Center of Croatia, and is managing several international projects. He is senior member of the IEEE Computer Society, the Croatian Academy of Engineering and several other Societies. He is an expert member of H2020 LEIT ICT Committee.
Currently he is mostly involved in business relations with industry partners in the area of computer systems and applications and business models in various industry segments such as HPC and health.