Our last on-site BH Futures Academy was held in March 2020 in Zenica, just a few days before our first lockdown. The year 2020 was very challenging for us, and it shifted us entirely into online mode.

But we adjusted very quickly; our webinars, tutoring programs, education sessions, and our academies were held online. Because of restrictive COVID19 measures and the ban of group gatherings, there is no doubt that we missed live events, communication, and interaction with each other. Fortunately, due to the improvement of the overall epidemiologic situation in our country, we were able to finally organize our second Academy this year, this time in Mostar from 25th to 27th June.

We started early

Although the Academy officially started on Friday, some of our scholars attended the 12th Bosnian-Herzegovinian American Academy of Arts and Sciences (BHAAAS) conference on Thursday, and some of them had an opportunity to present their work on various symposia organized during the conference.

Special Award on Friday

The Academy officially started with the inaugural ceremony of the “Vera Schneider Award”, organized in honor of Vera Schneider, the first female mathematician in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first female dean in the former Yugoslavia. This annual award, which is given to outstanding female students in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was won by two of our scholars Zlata Jašarević and Zorana Štaka. You can read more about it here.

After the official ceremony, a not-so-official ceremony was organized for our scholars at the hostel. We had a chance to meet our new Senior and Junior Scholars, who never attended our Academy before since they joined us in 2020.

Saturday: Rock and Roll

The majority of Academy activities were held at the University of Mostar, starting from the official opening of the Futures Academy on Saturday morning, and the introductory event “Getting to know each other”, where students had the opportunity to meet each other better through various games. Afterward, our scholars were able to acquire new knowledge and skills by attending the following workshops:

How to do personal branding while you are a student? – by Marina Riđić
Find your WHY! - by Tatjana Vučić
Focus and balance – by Iva Đikić

During these workshops, scholars were able to learn more about discovering and polishing their personal brand, boosting their confidence and authenticity, making their professional and professional plans, better understanding their feelings and thoughts, balancing work and personal life, improving their organizational skills, and even more. We are very thankful to Marina, Iva, and Tatjana for sharing their knowledge and experience with us.

More awards, more awards, more awards...

A special online ceremony for this year’s 3-Minute-Thesis Competition was held in the afternoon on Saturday. To remind you, 3 Minute Thesis is a competition where students from all over the world with origin from Bosnia and Herzegovina had the opportunity to present their research from any STEM field to the scientific jury and the public. This year, the competition was held for Bachelor and Master students, and we would like to congratulate everyone who participated because they showcased once again the outstanding research talent of Bosnia and Herzegovina. You can watch the entire ceremony here.

The rest of the day was reserved for informal activities such as Evaluation of the Day, Photo Session under the Old Bridge, networking, and singing activities.

Sunday Funday

The final day officially kicked off with a keynote lecture on “New Views of the Universe” held by Dragan Hunterer, professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. After that, scholars were split into smaller groups and visited successful local companies: ZenDev, FS Racing, and NSoft.

We would like to thank companies for a warm welcome and inspiring stories. It is very motivational to see our companies doing business on a global level. The final activity was the evaluation of the event, final hugs, and afterward, we went home with a bunch of new knowledge and great memories.

BH Futures Academy: Mostar Edition