Ivica Puljak

Ivica Puljak was born on August 27, 1969, in Split. He comes from a working-class family, and he started his life in a poor district where he spent a wonderful childhood growing up with his parents and three sisters. He is a typical child from Split, and every child from Split dreams of playing in Hajduk. He played in his favorite club for four years, from the age of 12 to 16. He also played basketball on the street and in neighborhood playgrounds.

Ivica graduated from the Technical High School in Split, and one summer at the end of his high school education, he learned to play the guitar. Even today it is one of his favorite ways to relax.

He received his PhD from the University Pierre and Maire Curie in Paris in 2000, while working in the Leprince Ringuet (LLR) laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau. He was Head of the Department of Mathematics and Physics, Head of the Department of Physics and Vice-Dean for Science and Informatics at FESB, member of the Board of Directors of the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, and was awarded several national and international prizes for science and education.

During 2011/2012, he was a Research Associate at CERN, and in 2016/2017 distinguished visiting professor at Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France. He has been a member of CMS collaboration since 1994 and the MAGIC collaboration since 2009. His research interests are the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS detector, the physics of the Higgs boson, and astroparticle physics.